Helen and Arthur Part 20

"Oh! that Arthur Hazleton were here," she exclaimed, "he would protect me."

"No danger shall reach you while I am near you, Helen," cried Clinton, again endeavoring to take her hand in his--but Helen darted into a side path and ran as fleetly and wildly as when she believed the glittering, fiery-eyed viper was pursuing her. Sometimes she caught hold of the slender trunk of a tree to give her a quicker momentum, and sometimes she sprang over brooklets, which, in a calmer moment, she would have deemed impossible. She felt that Clinton had slackened his pursuit as she drew near her home, but she never paused till she found herself in her own chamber, where, sinking into a chair, she burst into a pa.s.sion of tears such as she had never wept before. Shame, dread, resentment, fear--all pressed so crushingly upon her, her soul was bowed even to the dust. The future lowered so darkly before her. Mittie--she could not help looking upon her as a kind of avenging spirit--that would forever haunt her.

While she was in this state of ungovernable emotion, Mittie came in, with a face as white and rigid as marble, and stood directly in front of her.

"Why have you fled from Clinton so?" she cried, in a strange, harsh tone. "Tell me, for I will know. Tell me, for I have a right to know."

Helen tried to speak, but her breathless lips sought in vain to utter a sound. There was a bright, red spot in the centre of both cheeks, but the rest of her face was as colorless as Mittie's.

"Speak," cried Mittie, stamping her foot, with an imperious gesture, "and tell me the truth, or you had better never have been born."

"Ask me nothing," she said at length, recovering breath to answer, "for the truth will only make you wretched."

"What has he said to you?" repeated Mittie, seizing the arm of Helen with a force of which she was not aware. "Have you dared to let him talk to you about love?"

"Alas! I want not his love. I believe him not," cried Helen; "and, oh!

Mittie, trust him not. Think of him no more. He does not love you--is not worthy of you."

Mittie tossed Helen's arm from her with a violence that made her writhe with pain--while her eyes flashed with the bale-fires of pa.s.sion.

"How dare you tell me such a falsehood?" she exclaimed, "you little, artful, consummate hypocrite. He never told you this. You have been trying to supplant me from the moment of your arrival, trying to make yourself appear a victim, a saint--a martyr to a sister's jealous and exciting temper. I have seen it all. I have watched the whole, day after day. I have seen you stealing off to Miss Thusa's--pretending to love that horrible old woman--only that you might have clandestine meetings with Clinton. And now you are seeking to shake my confidence in his faith and truth, that you may alienate him more completely from me."

"Oh! Mittie--don't," cried Helen, "don't for Heaven's sake, talk so dreadfully. You don't mean what you say. You don't know what you are doing."

"I tell you I do know--and you shall know to your cost, you little wolf in lamb's clothing," cried Mittie, growing more and more frantic as she yielded to the violence of her pa.s.sions. "It was not enough, was it, to wind yourself round the young doctor with your subtle, childish ways, till you have made a fool of him with all his wisdom, treating him with a forwardness and familiarity that ought to make you blush at the remembrance--but you must come between me and the only being this side of Heaven I ever cared for? Take care of yourself; get out of my way, for I am growing mad. The sight of you makes me a maniac."

Helen was indeed terrified at an exhibition of temper so unparalleled.

She rose, though her limbs trembled so she could scarcely walk, and took two or three steps towards the door.

"Where are you going?" exclaimed Mittie.

"You told me to leave you," said Helen, faintly, "and indeed I cannot stay--I ought not to stay, and hear such false and cruel things. I will not stay," she exclaimed, with a sudden and startling flash of indignation; "I will not stay to be so insulted and trampled on. Let me pa.s.s."

"You shall not go to Clinton."

"Let me pa.s.s, I say," cried Helen, with a wild vehemence, that contrasted fearfully with her usual gentleness. "I am afraid of you, with such daggers in your tongue."

She rushed pa.s.sed Mittie, flew down stairs, into the sitting room, in the presence of her father, step-mother, and Clinton, who was sitting as if perfectly unconscious of the tempest he had roused.

"Father, father," she exclaimed, throwing herself into his arms. "Oh, father."

Nothing could be more startling than her appearance. The bright spot on her cheek was now deepened to purple, and her eyes had a strange, feverish l.u.s.tre.

"Why, what is the meaning of this?" cried Mr. Gleason, turning in alarm to his wife.

"Something must have terrified her--only feel of her hands, they are as cold as ice; and look at her cheeks."

"She seems ill, very ill," observed Clinton, rising, much agitated; "shall I go for a physician?"

"I fear Doctor Hazleton is not yet returned," said Mrs. Gleason, anxiously. "I think she is indeed ill--alarmingly so."

"No, no," cried Helen, clinging closer to her father, "don't send for Doctor Hazleton--anybody in the world but him. I cannot see him."

"How strange," exclaimed Mr. Gleason, "she must be getting delirious.

You had better carry her up stairs," added he, turning to his wife, "and do something to relieve her, while I go for some medical advice. She is subject to sudden nervous attacks."

"No, no," cried Helen, still more vehemently, "don't take me up stairs; I cannot go back; it would kill me. Only let me stay with you."

Mr. Gleason, who well remembered the terrible fright Helen had suffered in her childhood--her fainting over her mother's corpse--her imprisonment in the lonely school-house--believed that she had received some sudden shock inflicted by a phantom of her own imagination. Her frantic opposition to being taken up stairs confirmed this belief, and he insisted on his wife's conveying her to her own room and giving her an anodyne. Clinton felt as if his presence must be intrusive, and left the room--but he divined the cause of Helen's strange emotion. He heard a quick, pa.s.sionate tread overhead, and he well knew what the lion-strength of Mittie's unchained pa.s.sions must be.

Mrs. Gleason, too, had her suspicions of the truth, having seen Helen's homeward flight, and heard the voice of Mittie soon afterwards in loud and angry tones. She besought her husband to leave her to her care, a.s.suring him that all she needed was perfect quietude. For more than an hour Mrs. Gleason sat by the side of Helen, holding her hands in one of hers, while she bathed with the other her throbbing temples. Gradually the deep, purple flush faded to a pale hue, and her eyes gently closed.

The step-mother thought she slept, and darkened the window--so that the rays of the young moon could not glimmer through the cas.e.m.e.nt. Mrs.

Gleason looked upon Helen with anguish, seeing before her so much misery in consequence of her sister's jealous and irascible temper. She sighed for the departure of Clinton, whose coming had roused Mittie to such terrible life, and whose fascinations might be deadly to the peace of Helen. She could see no remedy to the evils which every day might increase--for she knew by long experience the indomitable nature of Mittie's temper.

"Mother," said Helen, softly, opening her eyes, "I do not sleep, but I rest, and it is so sweet--I feel as if I had been out in a terrible storm--so shattered and so bruised within. Oh! mother, you cannot think of the shameful accusations she has brought against me. It makes me shudder to think of them. I shall never, never be happy again. They will always be ringing in my ears--always blistering and burning me."

"You should not think her words of such consequence," said Mrs. Gleason, soothingly; "nothing she can say can soil the purity of your nature, or alienate the affections of your friends. She is a most unhappy girl, doomed, I fear, to be the curse of this otherwise happy household."

"I cannot live so," cried Helen, clasping her hands entreatingly, "I would rather die than live in such strife and shame. It makes me wicked and pa.s.sionate. I cannot help feeling hatred rising in my bosom, and then I loathe myself in dust and ashes. Oh! let me go somewhere, where I may be at peace--anywhere in the world where I shall be in n.o.body's way.

Ask father to send me back to school--I am young enough, and shall be years yet; or I should like to go into a nunnery, that must be such a peaceful place. No stormy pa.s.sions--no dark, bosom strife."

"No, my dear, we are not going to give up you, the joy and idol of our hearts. You shall not be the sacrifice; I will shield you henceforth from the violence of this lawless girl. Tell me all the events of this evening, Helen, without reserve. Let there be perfect confidence between us, or we are all lost."

Then Helen, though with many a painful and burning blush, told of her interview with Clinton, and all of which Mittie had so frantically accused her.

"When I rushed down stairs, I did not know what I was doing--my brain seemed on fire, and I thought my reason was gone. If I could find a place of shelter from her wrath, a spot where her eye could not blaze upon me! that was my only thought."

"Oh! that this dangerous, and I fear, unprincipled young man had never entered our household!" cried Mrs. Gleason; "and yet I would not judge him too harshly. Mittie's admiration, from the first, was only too manifest, and he must have seen before you arrived, the extraordinary defects of her temper. That he should prefer you, after having seen and known you, seems so natural, I cannot help pitying, while I blame him.

If it were possible to accelerate his departure--I must consult with Mr.

Gleason, for something must be done to restore the lost peace of the family."

"Let me go, dear mother, and all may yet be well."

"If you would indeed like to visit the Parsonage, and remain till this dark storm subsides, it might perhaps be judicious."

"Not the Parsonage--never, never again shall I be embosomed in its hallowed shades--I would not go there now, for ten thousand worlds."

"It is wrong, Helen, to allow the words of one, insane with pa.s.sion, to have the least influence on the feelings or conduct. Mrs. Hazleton, Arthur, and Alice, have been your best and truest friends, and you must not allow yourself to be alienated from them."

Helen closed her eyes to hide the tears that gathered on their surface, and it was not long before she sunk into a deep sleep. She had indeed received a terrible shock, and one from which her nerves would long vibrate.

The first time a young girl listens to the language of love, even if it steals into her heart gently and soothingly as the sweet south wind, wakening the sleeping fragrance of a thousand bosom flowers, every feeling flutters and trembles like the leaves of the mimosa, and recoils from the slightest contact. But when she is forced suddenly and rudely to hear the accents of pa.s.sion, with which she a.s.sociates the idea of guilt, and treachery, and shame, she feels as if some robber had broken into the temple consecrated to the purest, most innocent emotions, and stolen the golden treasures hidden there. This alone was sufficient to wound and terrify the young and sensitive Helen, but when her sister a.s.sailed her with such a temper of wrathful accusations, accusations so shameful and degrading, it is not strange that she was wrought up to the state of partial frenzy which led her to rush to a father's bosom for safety and repose.

And where was Mittie, the unhappy victim of her own wild, ungovernable pa.s.sion?

She remained in her room with her door locked, seated at the window, looking out into the darkness, which was illuminated by the rays of a waxing moon. She could see the white bark of the beech tree, conspicuous among the other trees, and knowing the spot where the letters were carved, she imagined she could trace them all, and that they were the scarlet color of blood.

She had no light in her room, but feeling in her writing desk for the pen-knife, she stole down stairs the back way and took the path she had so often walked with Clinton. She was obliged to pa.s.s the room where Helen lay, and glancing in at the window when the curtain fluttered, she could see her pale, sad-looking face, and she did not like to look again. She knew she had wronged her, for the moment she had given utterance to her railing words, conscience told her they were false.

This conviction, however, did not lessen the rancor and bitterness of her feelings. Hurrying on, she paused in front of the beech tree, and the cyphers glared Upon her as if seen through a magnifying gla.s.s--they looked so large and fiery. Opening her pen-knife, she smiled as a moonbeam glared on its keen, blue edge. Had any one seen the expression of her features, as she gazed at that shining, open blade, they would have shuddered, and trembled for her purpose.