Vashti Part 1

Vashti.

by Augusta J. Evans Wilson.

PREFACE.

"Every man has his own style, as he has his own nose; and it is neither polite nor Christian to rally an honest man about his nose, however singular it may be. How can I help it that my style is not different? That there is no affectation in it, I am very certain."

_Lessing._

"Yea, I take myself to witness, That I have loved no darkness, Sophisticated no truth, Nursed no delusion, Allowed no fear."

_Matthew Arnold._

UNTIL DEATH US DO PART.

CHAPTER I.

"I can hear the sullen, savage roar of the breakers, if I do not see them, and my pretty painted bark--expectation--is bearing down helplessly upon them. Perhaps the unwelcome will not come to-day. What then? I presume I should not care; and yet, I am curious to see him,--anxious to know what sort of person will henceforth rule the house, and go in and out here as master. Of course the pleasant, peaceful days are at an end, for men always make din and strife in a household,--at least my father did, and he is the only one I know much about. But, after all, why borrow trouble?--the interloper may never come."

The girl stood on tip-toe, shading her eyes with one hand, and peering eagerly down the winding road which stretched at right angles to the avenue, and over the hills, on towards the neighboring town. No moving speck was visible; and, with a sigh of relief, she sank back on the gra.s.sy mound and resumed the perusal of her book. Above and around her spread the wide branches of an aged apple-tree, feathered thickly with pearly petals, which the wind tossed hither and thither and drifted over the bermuda, as restless tides strew pink-chambered sh.e.l.ls on sloping strands; and down through the flowery limbs streamed the waning March sun, throwing grotesque shadows on the sward and golden ripples over the face and figure of the young lounger. A few yards distant a row of whitewashed bee-hives extended along the western side of the garden-wall, where perched a peac.o.c.k whose rainbow hues were burnished by the slanting rays that smote like flame the narrow pane of gla.s.s which const.i.tuted a window in each hive and permitted investigation of the tireless workers within. The afternoon was almost spent; the air, losing its balmy noon breath, grew chill with the approach of dew, and the figure under the apple-tree s.h.i.+vered slightly, and, closing her book, drew her scarlet shawl around her shoulders and leaned her dimpled chin on her knee.

Sixteen years had ripened and rounded the girlish form, and given to her countenance that indefinable charm which marks the timid hovering between careless, frolicsome youth, and calmly conscious womanhood; while perfect health rouged the polished cheeks and vermillioned the thin lips, whose outlines sharply indexed more of decision than amiability of character.

There were hints of brown in the heavy ma.s.s of waveless dusky hair, that was elaborately braided and coiled around the well turned head, and certain amber rays suggestive of topaz and gold flashed out now and then in the dark-hazel iris of the large eyes, lending them an eldritch and baleful glow. Fresh as the overhanging apple-blooms, but immobile as if carved from pearl,--perhaps it was just such a face as hers that fronted Jason, amid the cl.u.s.tering boughs of Colchian rhododendrons, when first he sought old aeetes'

prescient daughter,--the maiden face of magical Medea, innocent as yet of murder, sacrilege, fratricide, and plunder,--eloquent of all possibilities of purity and peace, but vaguely adumbrating all conceivable disquietude and guilt.

The hushed expectancy of the fair young countenance had given place to a dreamy languor, and the dark lashes drooped heavily, when a long shadow fell upon the gra.s.s, and simultaneously the peac.o.c.k sounded its shrill alarm. Rising quickly the girl found herself face to face with one upon whose features she had never looked before, and for a moment each eyed the other searchingly. The stranger raised his hat, and inclining his head slightly, said,--

"Permit me to ask your name?"

"Salome Owen. And yours, sir, is--"

"Ulpian Grey."

For a few seconds neither spoke; but the man smiled, and the girl bit her under-lip and frowned.

"Are you the miller's daughter?"

"I am the miller's daughter; and you are the master of Gra.s.smere."

"It seems that I come home like Rip Van Winkle, or Ulysses, unknown, unwelcomed,--unlike the latter,--even by a dog."

"Where is your sister?"

"Not having seen her for five years, I am unable to answer."

"She went to town two hours ago, to meet you."

"Then, after all, I am expected; but pray by what route--balloon or telegraph?"

"Miss Jane went to the railroad depot, but thought it possible you might not arrive to-day, and said she would attend a meeting at the church, if you failed to come. I presume she missed you in the crowd.

Sir, will you walk into the house?"

Perhaps he did not hear the question, and certainly he did not heed it, amid the clamorous recollections that rushed upon him as he gazed earnestly over the lawn, down the avenue, and up at the ivy-mantled front of the old brick homestead. Thinking it might impress him as ludicrous or officious that she should invite him to enter and take possession of his own establishment, Salome reddened and compressed her lips. Apparently forgetful of her presence, he stood with his hat in his hand, noting the changes that time had wrought: the growth of venerable trees and favorite shrubs, the crumbling of fences, the gathering moss on the sun-dial, and the lichen stains upon two marble vases that held scarlet verbena on either side of the broad stone steps.

His close-fitting travelling suit of gray showed the muscular, well-developed form of a man of medium size, whose very erect carriage enhanced his height and invested him with a commanding air; while the unusual breadth of his chest and shoulders seemed to indicate that life had called him to athletic out-door pursuits, rather than the dun and dusty atmosphere of a sedentary, cloistered career.

There are subtle countenances that baffle the dainty stipple and line tracery of time, refusing to become mere tablets, mere fleshy intaglios of the past, whereon every curious stranger may spell out the bygone, and, counting their footprints, cast up the number of engraving years. Thus it happened that if Salome had not known from the family Bible that this man was almost thirty-five, her eager scrutiny of his features would have discovered little concerning his age, and still less concerning his character. Exposure to the winds and heat of tropic regions had darkened and sallowed the complexion, which his clear deep blue eyes and light brown hair declared was originally of Saxon fairness; in proof whereof, when he drew off one glove and lifted his hand it seemed as if the marble fingers of one statue were laid against the bronze cheek of another.

Looking intently at this grave yet benignant countenance, full of serenity, because calmly conscious of its power, the girl set her teeth and ground her heel into the velvet turf, for _frangas non flectes_ was written on his smooth, broad brow, and she felt fiercely rebellious as some fiery, free creature of the Kamse, when first confronted with the bit and trappings of him who will henceforth bridle and tame the desert-bred.

Waking from his brief reverie, the stranger turned and extended his hand, saying, in tones as low and sweet as a woman's,--

"Will you not welcome a wanderer back to his home?"

She gave him the tips of her fingers, but the "Imp of the Perverse"

dictated her answer,--

"As you saw fit to compare yourself, a few moments since, to certain celebrated absentees, I am constrained to tell you that I happen to be neither Penelope nor Gretchen, nor yet the ill.u.s.trious dog referred to."

He smiled good-humoredly, and replied,--

"I am not very sure that there is not a spice of Dame Van Winkle somewhere in your nature. True, we are strangers, but I believe you are my sister's adopted child, and I hope you are glad to see her brother at home once more. Jane is a dear kind link, who should make us at least good friends; for, if you are attached to her you will in time learn to like me."

"I doubt it,--seeing that you resemble Miss Jane about as nearly as I do the Grand Lama of Larissa, or the idol Bhadrinath. But, sir, although it is not my office to welcome you, I presume you have not forgotten the front door, and once more I ask, Will you walk in and make yourself at home in your own house?"

As she led the way to the steps, the arched gate at the end of the avenue swung open, a carriage entered, and Salome retreated to her own room, leaving unwitnessed the happy meeting between an aged, infirm sister, and long-absent brother.

Locking the door to secure herself from intrusion, she drew a low rocking-chair to the hearth, where smouldered the embers of a dying fire, and dropping her face in her palms, stared abstractedly at the ashes. As she swayed slowly to and fro, her lips parted and closed, her brows bent from their customary curves of beauty, and half inaudibly she muttered,--

"The sceptre is departing from Judah. My rule is well nigh ended; the interregnum has been brief, and the old dynasty reigns once more.

Just what I dreaded from the hour I heard he was coming home. I shall be reduced to a mere cipher, and made to realize my utter dependence,--and the iron will soon enter my soul. We paupers are adepts in the art of reading the countenance, and I have looked at this Ulpian Grey long enough to know that I might as well bombard Gibraltar with boiled peas as hope to conquer one of his whims or alter one of his purposes. There will be bitterness and strife between us. I shall wish him in his grave a thousand times before it closes over him,--and he, unless he is too good, will hate me cordially. I cannot and will not give up all my hopes and expectations, without a long, fierce struggle."

Salome Owen was the eldest of five children, who, by the death of both parents, had been thrown penniless upon the world, and found a temporary asylum in the county poor-house. Her mother she remembered merely as a feeble, fractious invalid; and her father, who had long been employed as superintendent of large mills belonging to Miss Jane Grey, had, after years of reckless intemperance, ended his wretched career in a fit of mania a potu. His death occurred at a season when Miss Grey was confined to her bed by an attack of rheumatism, which rendered her a cripple for the remainder of her days; but the first hours of her convalescence were spent in devising plans for the education and maintenance of his helpless orphans. In the dusty, cheerless yard of the poor-house she had found the little group huddled under a mulberry tree one hot July noon; and, sending the two younger children to the orphan asylum in a neighboring town, she had apprenticed one boy to a worthy carpenter, another to an eminent horticulturist in a distant State; and Salome, the handsomest and brightest of the flock, she carried to her own home as an adopted child. Here, for four years, the girl had lived in peace and luxurious ease, surrounded by all the elegances and refining a.s.sociations which though not inherent in are at the command of wealth; and so rapidly and gracefully had she fitted herself into the new social niche, that the dark and stormy morning of her life had become only a dim and hideous recollection, that rarely lifted its hated visage above the smooth and s.h.i.+ning surface of the happy present.

Fortuitous circ.u.mstances const.i.tute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all-ordaining fate; while to the philosophic anthropologist it might furnish matter for curious speculation whether, if Attila and Alaric had chanced to find themselves the pampered sons of some merchant prince,--some Rothschild or Peabody of the fifth century,--their campaigns had not been purely fiscal and bloodless, limited to the leaves of a ledger, while the names of Goth and Hun had never crystallized into synonyms of havoc and ruin; or had Timour been trained to cabbage-raising and vine-dressing, whether he would not have lived in history as the great horticulturist of Kesth, or the Diocletian of Samarcand, rather than the Tartar tyrant and conqueror of the East? How many possible Howards have swung at Tyburn? How many canonized and haloed heads have barely escaped the doom of Brinvilliers, and the tender mercies of Carnifex?

a.n.a.logous to that wonderful Gulf Stream, once a myth and still a mystery, the strange current of human existence, four score and ten years long, bears each and all of us with a strong, steady sweep away from the tropic lands of sunny childhood, enamelled with verdure and gaudy with bloom, through the temperate regions of manhood and womanhood, fruitful and harvest-hued, on to the frigid, lonely sh.o.r.es of dreary old age, snow-crowned and ice-veined; and individual destinies seem to resemble the tangled drift on those broad bounding gulf-billows, driven hither and thither, strewn on barren beaches, scattered over bleaching coral crags, stranded upon blue bergs,--precious germs from all climes and cla.s.ses; some to be scorched under equatorial heats; some to perish by polar perils; a few to take root and flourish and triumph, building imperishable land-marks; and many to stagnate in the long, inglorious rest of a Sarga.s.so Sea.

For all helpless human waifs in this surging ocean of time, there is comfort in the knowledge that the fiercest storms toss their drift highest; and one of these apparently savage waves of adversity had swept Salome Owen safely to an isle of palms and peace, where, under the fostering rays of prosperity, the selfish and sordid elements of her character found rapid development.

In affectionate natures, family ties serve as cords to strangle selfishness; for, in large domestic circles, each member contributes a moiety to swell the good of the whole--silently endures some trial, makes some sacrifice, shares some sympathy and suns.h.i.+ne, h.o.a.rds some grief and gloom, and had Salome remained with her brothers and sisters, their continual claims on her time and attention would have healthfully diverted thoughts that had long centred solely in self.

Finding that fortune had temporarily sheathed in velvet the goad of necessity, the girl's aspirations soared no higher than the maintenance of her present easy and luxurious position, as a petted dependent on the affection and bounty of a weak but generous and lonely old lady. Having no other object near, upon which to lavish the love and caresses that were stored in her heart, Miss Jane had turned fondly to Salome, and so earnestly endeavored to brighten her life, that the latter felt a.s.sured she was selected as the heiress of that house and estate where she had dwelt so happily; and thus sanguine concerning her future prospects, the strong will of the girl completely dominated the feebler and failing one of her benefactress, through whose fingers the reins of government slipped so gradually, that she was unconscious of her virtual abdication.