Mrs. Harrington

“ A Harrington is anything but a coward. I did go and because I am devoted to your interests. That very morning, I saw announced in the paper, just beneath poor Andrew’s hand, as he held it up at the breakfast-table, reading it, I saw among the deaths, Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay, Baronet, of quinsy! Twice that good man has come to my rescue! Oh! I welcomed him as a piece of Providence! I turned and said to Harriet, ‘I see they have put poor Papa in the paper.’ Harriet was staggered. I took the paper from Andrew, and pointed it to her. She has no readiness. ”

“ We are no boy and girl, remember, Zillah; and, though it is very pleasant to feel that one heart at least proves faithful to the end, I cannot, in justice to Mrs. Harrington, admit you under the same roof with herself. Her peace of mind is important to me, very important, and her tranquillity must not be endangered by these wild visits. I will withdraw, now, and give you an opportunity to leave the house; be careful that no one sees you, especially Mrs. Harrington. Adieu! In two [366] or three days, at most, I shall be able to see you and Lina. ”

“ The business woman is the business woman all through her life--she is never the charitable lady, even for a moment.
Mrs. Harrington had wished to have the bringing out of a beautiful heiress. She had no desire to support a penniless orphan. The matter had, in her mind, taken the usual form of a contract in black and white. Mrs. Harrington would supply position and a suitable home--Eve was to have paid for her own dresses--chosen by the elder contractor--and to have filled gracefully the gratifying, if hollow, position of a young person of means looking for a husband. ”

“ How can he eat, with the phantom of Rose there, covering her head, shuddering, loathing him? But he must appear in company: he has a coat, if he has not a skin. Let him button it, and march boldly. Our comedies are frequently youth's tragedies. We will smile reservedly as we mark Mr. Evan Harrington step into the midst of the fair society of the drawing- room. Rose is at the piano. Near her reclines the Countess de Saldar, fanning the languors from her cheeks, with a word for the diplomatist on one side, a whisper for Sir John Loring on the other, and a very quiet pair of eyes for everybody. ”

“ Harrington with quite a pleasant smile, which did not belong to her by rights, but to the girl behind him.
Fitz had been away for two years. Mrs. Harrington in making overtures of peace to Luke had been prompted by the one consistent motive of her life, self-gratification. She was tired of the obsequious society of persons like the Ingham-Bakers, whom she mentally set down as parasites. There is a weariness of the flesh that comes to rich women uncontrolled. They weary of their own power. Tyranny palls. Mrs. Harrington was longing to be thwarted by some one stronger than herself. ”

“ She sleeps, my noble-hearted Muriel—she who, misled by my proud, spleenful folly, thinks I have given my heart to Harrington. And he! oh, how can he forgive me when I tell him—but he will—that noble nature cannot scorn me; he will understand and pity and pardon. Let me only tell him frankly—let me atone for all my wrong by humbling myself before him; let me crave his compassion and forgiveness, and so be fitter to go from earth to my Savior’s rest. To-morrow I will depart from hence, and before I go I will see Harrington and Muriel, and make my peace with them. ”

“ Oh, miseree, miseree!”
“Hush, hush, Bagasse!” faltered Harrington, hardly able to speak for emotion. “Hush, old friend. We must all die sometime. Don’t grieve. There, there. It will soon be over. Richard, dear Richard, don’t weep so. Captain, friend, father, do not break my heart. Come, come, bear up, bear up.”
“Oh, Harrington,” sobbed Wentworth, throwing himself upon his breast, “what will life be to me if you die! And Muriel—my God, this will kill her! To lose you in this way, three days after her wedding. She never can survive it.” ”

“ Harrington, astonished beyond measure, sat in silence, wondering what object Muriel could have in telling him this, all his being, meanwhile, one burning flush of grief and pain.
“To which,” pursued Muriel, “Monsieur Bagasse replied in his French patois to this effect: ‘Why is it odd that a rich and beautiful lady should love Mr. Harrington. Is it odd because he wears an old coat? Ah, Mr. Witherlee, there are duchesses that love the old coat because it covers the nobility of heart they also love! ”

“ Bagasse rose from his knees, and turning away, stood in a stupor of despair, with his head bent upon his chest and his arms tightly folded.
“Oh, Harrington, Harrington!” cried Wentworth, “how could you go on this accursed enterprise! How could you leave Muriel, loving her so much, when you knew that you were to die! Your love for her should have kept you”—
“No, Richard,” interrupted Harrington, in his sweet, faint tones. “My love for her sent me. I could not love her so much if I did not love mankind more. ”

“ She meant to marry him, spend a year or so among the “beastly bellowing cattle,” and then return to Sydney, where as Mrs. Harrington, the wealthy squatter's wife, she could enjoy herself thoroughly, snub some of the women she hated, and flirt with some of the men she liked.
Late one night, Harrington, sauntering from the theatre to his hotel, met, to his intense astonishment, a man he knew—had known years before when he (Harrington) was a drover and the other man—Walters—was a mounted trooper in the Queensland police. ”

“ About her hung that indefinable and delicious patrician odor which we sometimes perceive around the persons of fair women, and which touches the imagination like the aroma of a poetic nobility of soul. A thrill fled through the veins of Harrington as he gazed on her, and then his eyes grew sad, and the smile on his face died slowly away.
“Ah, Muriel,” he said, in a low, rapt voice, “the beauty [423] that my eyes see in you is the token of the beauty my soul knows in you. How could I bear to leave you! Once it was a joy to think of death, but now heaven could not tempt me from earth with you.” ”

“ Ah, John Harrington, what have you done? You have taken the most precious and pure thing in this world, the thing men as brave as you have given their heart’s best blood to win and have perished for failing, the thing which angels guard and Heaven has in its keeping–the love of a good and noble woman. ”

“ Earthly cares and hopes forgotten, earthly strifes removed and dim, and the sorrow of their hopeless love so chastened and sanctified in the nobleness of mutual sacrifice that it knew no touch of pain.
A long, mysterious sigh of the night-wind breathed around the dwelling, and stole into the peace of their minds. Harrington smiled, and his heart rose in benediction as he silently laid his hands upon the fair and sacred head of his beloved.
“The night deepens on, Muriel, and we must part,” he gently murmured. ”

“ Sinking still lower, he crept to the edge of the wharf, lay flat, and gazed at the boats, through the dense darkness, with straining eyes. In a moment the lightning flashed again, and he saw a single man standing in one of the vessels, looking out to sea, with his back to him, and his hands in the pockets of a sou’wester. At a glance, Harrington knew, by the look of his figure, that he was a sailor, and overjoyed that he had but one to deal with, he instantly rose, drew his pistol from his breast, put on his hat, and with a noiseless step glided down the pier to the ladder. ”

“ Witherlee cowered at the sight of this solemn and compassionate emotion, and his head fell. In that moment he remembered the hard and cruel insult he had so lately flung upon the man before him, and he trembled in an agony of shame.
“Fernando,” said Harrington, calmly and tenderly, “I pity you from the bottom of my heart. I could almost die with pity for you. Do not, I beg of you, do not degrade your soul by persisting in what you know to be falsehoods. You know you are not telling Emily the truth now, and you know there is not a word of truth in all you have told her.” ”

“ Harrington dropped his arm, which had lain like a bar across the bosom of Muriel, and advanced upon the cowering wretch before him.
“Listen!” said he, in a voice like bronze, deep, solemn and awful. “Listen to those murmurs in the street! Hark!”
In the dead hush, there was a noise like a coming sea, pierced with shrill sounds like the distant screams of the curlew.
“Man!” thundered Harrington, “you came here to rob your fellow of all God gave him! You dared to risk your life among these plundered and trampled poor—despoiled and outraged daily by you and such as you! Are you ready to die?” ”

“ Andrew.”
“That’s it,” said the landlady. “And because he took it into his head to go and to choose for himself, and be married, no getting his brother, Mr. Tom, to speak to him. Why not, indeed? If there’s to be no marrying, the sooner we lay down and give up, the better, I think. But that’s his way. He do hate us women, Mrs. Harrington. I have heard he was crossed. Some say it was the lady of Beckley Court, who was a Beauty, when he was only a poor cobbler’s son.”
Mrs. Mel breathed nothing of her relationship to Mr. Tom, but continued from time to time to express solicitude about Dandy. ”

“ It was first agreed that Harrington should permit himself a vacation, free from the toil of study, in this the golden crescent of their eternal honeymoon. It was next resolved that Harrington should keep his house in Chambers street, and live there when he so chose. Both he and Muriel thought that married people are too intimate with each other, see too much of each other, push too far and frequently into the sacred privacy which Nature sets around the individual soul, and so lose the charm of freshness which is at once the crowning delight and most potent safeguard of love. ”

“ As she thought over her own hasty action in leaving her husband's home forever, she could not feel she had done wrong. Never, never could she have lived with others taunting her that she had been married out of pity—for that was what his mother's words had meant. Charles had not married her for love, but for pity, because, for some unexplained reason, Harrington had chosen to desert her at the last minute. Her exhausted spirit did not care to know the reason. She could but be thankful that he had. Anything, anything was better than to have been married to him. ”

“ The blood of Harrington seemed turned to ice as he gazed, and his hair rose.
“In the name of God,” he gasped, “what manner of man are you?”
The figure did not answer, but stared at him and trembled.
Harrington’s heart was stout, and conquering at once his affright and the sickening disgust which the stench gave him, he made one stride nearer to the figure.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?” he demanded. ”

“ Harrington?'
'There is his father's business, my lady.'
His father's business! Then must the young man become a tradesman in order to show respect for his father? Preposterous! That was the lady's natural inward exclamation. She said, rather shrewdly, for one who knew nothing of such things: 'But a business which produces debts so enormous, Mrs. Harrington!'
The widow replied: 'My son will have to conduct it in a different way.
It would be a very good business, conducted properly, my lady.'
'But if he has no taste for it, Mrs. ”

“ My mother had never met Lady Harrington, but she soon grew much attached to one who became a true friend to me, and as time went on seemed more and more endeared to me. She must have been very beautiful when young, being still extremely handsome as an old lady. ”

“ I went straight to Lady Racial, my dear. There was nothing else for it but to go and speak. She is truly a noble woman—serves us in every way. As she should!—much affected by sight of Evan, and keeps aloof from Beckley Court. The finger of Providence is in all. Adieu! but do pray think of Miss Carrington! It was foolish of her to offend me. Drives and walks—the Duke attentive. Description of him when I embrace you. I give amiable Sir Franks Portuguese dishes. Ah, my dear, if we had none but men to contend against, and only women for our tools! ”

“ Wentworth had been complaining that something was hurting his foot, and sat down in the hall to take off his boot and see what was the matter, while Harrington went up-stairs into the library.
The jewel of the rich room was Muriel, and Muriel lay on a velvet couch, asleep. The young man noiselessly approached her, and stood tenderly watching her beauty in its repose. She lay in a glimmer of light from the western window, and the faint radiance lit her dreamful face, whose beauty was like a hymn of immortal joy. ”

“ Harrington before we had the honor of his friendship, and let me further say to you that while the choice of my daughter’s heart, be he rich or poor, shall be my choice also, I should esteem it the best hour of my life which gave me assurance that she would wed a man worthier of her than any man I know, and dear to me as my own son! Take that home with you, sir, and do us the honor to believe that in this house we value gentlemen for what they are, and not for what they own. ”

“ The tears sprang to Richard’s eyes.
“Ah, Harrington,” said he, dejectedly, “it’s all very well for me to talk, but I feel poorer in spirit, for having said, even at such an urging, what was not true. You are a nobler man than I, for you would not lie for the man you would die for. No matter,” he added, recklessly, “I could not do otherwise.”
Harrington covered his eyes with his hand, and sat silent. Emily, in a dazed condition, looked slowly from one to the other. But Muriel, after a moment’s pause, rose from her seat, put her arms around Richard, and kissed him. ”