13. CHAPTER XIII.
THE SPIDER SPINS.
JULIA got up from her bed the moment that
her mother had gone. Her first feeling was that her
privacy had been shamefully outraged. A true
mother should honorably respect the reserve of the
little child. But Julia was now a woman, grown,
with a woman's spirit. She rose from her bed, and shut her
window with a bang that was meant to be a protest. She then
put the tenpenny nail sometimes used to fasten the window
down, in its place, as if to say, “Come in, if you can.” Then
she pulled out the folds of the chintz curtain, hanging on its
draw-string half-way up the window. If there had been any
other precaution possible, she would have taken it. But there
was not.
She took up the note, and read it. Julia was not a girl of
keen penetration. Her training was that of a country life. She
did not read between the lines of August's note, and could only
understand that she was dismissed. Outraged by her mother's
tyranny, spurned by her lover, she stood like a hunted creature,
brought to bay, looking for the last desperate chance for escape.
Crushed? No. If she had been weaker, if she had been
of the quieter, frailer sort, instead of being, as she was, elastic,
impulsive, recuperative, she might have been crushed. She was
wounded in her heart of hearts, but all her pride and hardihood,
of which she had not a little, had now taken up arms against
outrageous fortune. She was stung at every thought of August
and his letter, of Betsey Malcolm and her victory, of the fact
that her mother had read the letter and knew of her humiliation.
And she paced the floor of her room, and resolved to
resist and to be revenged. She would marry anybody, that
she might show Betsey and August they had not broken her
heart and that her love did not go begging.
O Julia! take care. Many another woman has jumped off
that precipice!
And she would escape from her mother. The indications of
affection adroitly given by Humphreys were all remembered now.
She could have him, and she would. He would take her to
Cincinnati. She would have her revenge all around. I am
sorry to show you my heroine in this mood. But the fairest
climes are sometimes subject to the fiercest hurricanes, the
frightfulest earthquakes!
After an hour the room seemed hot. She pulled back the
chintz curtain and pushed up the window. The blue-grass in
the pasture looked cool as it drank the heavy dews. She
climbed through the window on to the long, old-fashioned upper
porch. She sat down upon an old-fashioned settee with rockers,
and began to rock. The motion relieved her nervousness
and fanned her hot cheeks. Yes, she would accept the
first respectable lover that offered. She would go to the city
with Humphreys, if he asked her. It is only fair to say that
Julia did not at all consider—she was not in a temper to consider—what
a marriage with Humphreys implied. She only
thought of it on two sides—the revenge upon August and
Betsey, and the escape from a thralldom now grown more bitter
than death. True, her conscience was beginning to awaken,
and to take up arms against her resolve. But nothing could be
plainer. In marrying Mr. Humphreys she should marry a
friend, the only friend she had. In marrying him she would
satisfy her mother, and was it not her duty to sacrifice something
to her mother's happiness, perhaps her mother's life?
Yes, yes, Julia, a false spirit of self-sacrifice is another path
over the cliff! In such a mood as this all paths lead into the
abyss.
Her mind was made up. She braced her will against all
the relentings of her heart. She wished that Humphreys, who
had indirectly declared his love so often, were there to offer at
once. She would accept him immediately, and then the whole
neighborhood should not say that she had been deserted by
a Dutchman. For in her anger she found her mother's epithets
expressive.
He was there! Was it the devil that planned it? Does
he plan all those opportunities for wrong that are so sure to
offer themselves? Humphreys, having led a life that turned
night into day, sat at the farther end of the long upper porch,
smoking his cigar, waiting a bed-time nearer to the one to
which he was accustomed.
Did he suspect the struggle in the heart of Julia Anderson?
Did he guess that her pride and defiance had by this time
reached high-water mark? Did he divine this from seeing
her there? He rose and started in through the door
of the upper hall, the only opening to the porch, except
the window. But this was a feint. He turned back and
sat himself down upon the farther end of the settee from
Julia. He understood human nature perfectly, and had
had long practice in making gradual approaches. He begged
her pardon for the bungling manner in which he had communicated
intelligence that must be so terrible to a heart so
sensitive! Julia was just going to declare that she did not care
anything for what August said or thought, but her natural truthfulness
checked the transparent falsehood. She had not gone
far enough astray to lie consciously; she was, as yet, only telling
lies to herself. Very gradually and cautiously did he proceed so
as not to “flush the bird.” Even as I saw, an hour ago, a
cat creep upon a sparrow with fascinating eyes, and a waving,
snake-like motion of the tail, and a treacherous feline smile upon
her face, even so, cautiously and by degrees, Humphreys felt
his way with velvet paws toward his prey. He knew the
opportunity, that once gone might not come again; he soon
guessed that this was the hour and power of darkness in the
soul of Julia, the hour in which she would seek to flee from
her own pride and mortification. And if Humphreys knew
how to approach with a soft tread, very slowly and cautiously,
he also knew—men of his “profession” always know—when
to spring. He saw the moment, he made the spring, he seized
the prey.
“Will you trust your destiny to me, Miss Anderson? You
seem beset by troubles. I have means. I could not but be
wholly devoted to your welfare. Let me help you to flee away
from—from all this mortification, and this—this domestic tyranny.
Will you intrust yourself to me?”
He did not say anything about love. He had an instinctive
feeling that it would not be best. She felt herself environed
with insurmountable difficulties, threatened with agonies worse
than death—so they seemed to her. He simply, coolly opened
the door, and bade her easily and triumphantly escape. Had he
said one word of tenderness the reaction must have set in.
She was silent.
“I did hope, by sacrificing all my own hopes, to effect a
reconciliation. But when that young man spoke insulting words
about you, I determined at once to offer you my devoted protection.
I ask no more than you are able to give, your respect.
Will you accept my life-long protection as your husband?”
“Yes!” said the passionate girl in an agony of despair.
