Chapter XX: Elsie in the Attic

To-night, when my head aches indeed,
And I can either think nor read,
And these blue fingers will not hold
The pen—(this attic’s freezing cold)—
I tell you, I pace up and down
This garret, crowned with love’s best crown,
And feasted with love’s perfect feast,
To think I bear for him at least.
_—Browning._

When they re-entered the ballroom the revelry was still at its height. Six cotillions were on the floor.

Judge Jacky was flying about, now here and now there, now everywhere at once.

Ambrosia Wylie, in a gold-colored satin, that harmonized well with her warm-hued tone of beauty, sat in the bay window, the sunny center of a system of satellites.

General Garnet, who had got through with the political business that detained him at Huttontown, had just arrived, and was now standing apart, conversing with Lionel Hardcastle. He frowned darkly on seeing Elsie enter the room leaning on the arm of Magnus, and both looking so self-possessed, confident, and happy.

He smoothed his brow quickly, however, excused himself to Lionel, and advanced toward them. Bowing slightly to Magnus, he took the arm of Elsie, and saying that he wished to have a conversation with her, drew her off for a promenade.

In going off, Elsie turned, smiled on Magnus, and said:

“If I do not return in half an hour, Dr. Hardcastle, you must seek me out,” and, bowing playfully, she went on.

“Was that done to insult me, Miss Garnet?”

“No, dearest father, it was done out of respect to Dr. Hardcastle; as you forgot to excuse yourself to him for taking me off so abruptly, it would have been scarcely courteous in me to have left him without a word. We would not have treated a common acquaintance so, father.”

“A common acquaintance! And pray what more is Dr. Hardcastle entitled henceforth to be considered?”

“As my husband, and as your son-in-law, father.”

General Garnet turned pale, and spoke low, with suppressed rage:

“Your husband, and my son-in-law! I—would—see—him—and—you—in the lowest pit of h——l first!”

Elsie gave a violent start as this awful word struck her like a bullet. It was the more awful, that Elsie had never known her father to forget himself so far before. Violence shocked her, profanity revolted her; she was unaccustomed to either. Her father, even in his tyranny, was habitually polite. Her mother was ever gentle. Fury, threats, were strange to her; and now came this terrible burst of passion, the more terrible for its half suppression. She gazed at him in alarm. His face was white with anger, but it reminded her of the white ashes upon a burning coal. He continued in the same deep, stern tone:

“How dared you even receive that young man’s attentions, after I have withdrawn my countenance of him?”

“Father, because his attentions were my right and his right. Who else, in your absence, could have attended me with so much propriety?” asked Elsie, trembling in her flesh, but firm in her spirit.

“Do not commit the impertinence of answering my question by asking another again, Miss Garnet. A question which, impertinent as it was, I will answer. ‘Who,’ you inquire, ‘in my absence, could have attended you with so much propriety?’ I reply, Mr. Lionel Hardcastle, the gentleman under whose protection I placed you for the evening.”

“And who wickedly abused his position by addressing the words of love to one whom he knew to be Dr. Hardcastle’s betrothed wife.”

“Death! if you say that again,” exclaimed General Garnet, trembling with fury.

“And whom,” continued Elsie, frightened, but resolute, “I had therefore to dismiss as soon as I found Dr. Hardcastle.”

He grasped her arm with a violence that might have crushed it. He set his teeth, and drew his breath hard. He could not shake or beat her there—not in that room full of company—among those hundreds of people. He could not even let them see the rage that was on the eve of explosion.

He looked around. Seeing Lionel Hardcastle at a short distance, he beckoned him to approach, and, without relinquishing his vise-like grip, said, in a deep, hurried tone:

“Do me the favor to call my carriage, sir, instantly, if you please.”

Lionel opened his soft, bright eyes in a look of wide surprise, turned on Elsie a gaze of mingled admiration, sorrow, and deprecation, and, bowing to General Garnet, moved off to comply with his request.

General Garnet grasped Elsie’s arm with a suppressed fierceness, and pulled her after him into the hall, thence out into the portico, and down the steps to the carriage door. Pushing her forcibly in, he jumped in after, pulled to the door, commanded the coachman to drive rapidly for Mount Calm, and was soon whirled away on the road to that place. He maintained a stern silence toward Elsie during the whole ride.

Arrived at Mount Calm, he sprang from the carriage, took Elsie out, drew her arm roughly within his own, and pulled her up the steps.

“Has your mistress retired?” was the first question he asked of the servant at the door. The man started at the fierce abruptness of his master’s tone and manner, and replied hurriedly that she had.

“It is very well. Go wake up the housekeeper; ask her for the keys of the attic-room, and bring them to me yourself, with a night-lamp.”

The man hurried away in dismay. And General Garnet remained there, still with his violent grasp upon Elsie’s arm. When the servant returned with the bunch of keys and the light:

“Precede me upstairs, and on up into the attic,” said General Garnet; and grasping Elsie more tightly, he fiercely hurried her on, till they reached the first floor, and the wide hall into which the family chambers opened.

“Father, this is my chamber door. I wish to retire,” said Elsie, pointing to the door on her left. But her father hurried her past it.

The servant was now going up the attic steps, but paused to look down upon the scene.

“Father, what are you about to do?” asked Elsie, holding back. Her attire had been very much disordered by the violence with which she had been hurried in, her cloak and hood had fallen off below stairs; now her beautiful dress was tumbled, and her hair in wild disorder. “What are you going to do, father?” she asked again, drawing back.

But he turned upon her sharply, shook her furiously, as though he would have shaken the life from out her; and then seeing the horrified gaze of the servant standing on the stairs, he exclaimed, “Up into the attic, and wait for me there, instantly, sirrah. And consider yourself already sold to a trader, for your insolence in watching me!”

The appalled servant vanished up the steps, and the unmasked tyrant turned to Elsie, and tightening the grasp that he had never relinquished, dragged her to the foot of the attic stairs. Here the girl sank with all her weight upon him, upheld only by his hand.

“Up, up the stairs with you!” he exclaimed fiercely.

Elsie had too much physical strength to swoon, and too much presence of mind to scream. She would not have terrified her poor mother to no good purpose. Yet her agitation was so great, with augmented astonishment and terror, that she could not move.

He seized her violently, drew her up the stairs until they had reached the narrow attic passage, and commanding the negro to unlock the door that stood before them, forced her into the room; dismissed the servant, locked the door on the inside, and turned upon her. Elsie had dropped into an old flag-bottomed armchair, where she sat shivering with cold and fear. He turned upon the delicate and trembling girl fiercely, scornfully, triumphantly, tauntingly, as if she had been some rough male adversary in his power. He placed the key in his pocket, buttoned up his overcoat, and stood looking at her with a bitter, sarcastic laugh, saying:

“You have insulted and provoked me sufficiently this evening, Miss Garnet! You were very happy and confident an hour ago. What do you think of your prospects now?”

Elsie shuddered and was silent.

“Can you escape from this room? Will you jump from one of those windows and fall a hundred feet? Will your lover find a ladder long enough to reach you? I think not. Can you break that lock? I think not. Will you bribe your jailer? I think not; for I shall be your jailer myself. No one else shall enter this room. And now listen to me,” and taking a chair, he sat down before her, and said in a hard, harsh voice, “I do not care one jot for all the miserable, contemptible love sentiment in the world; I never did! I do not believe in it. I never did! But that which I want, and that which I will have, is the union of these two joining estates, Mount Calm and Hemlock Hollow. That project is as dear to old Mr. Hardcastle as it is to me. It was for that reason, and not upon account of any trifling, mutual predilection of yours, that we were about to negotiate a marriage between my daughter and his nephew, when fortunately Lionel came home in time to arrest the execution of the plan; of course it was perfectly easy to see what then became the duty of all parties.”

“Fidelity,” said Elsie in a low voice.

General Garnet laughed tauntingly, and continued without further notice of her reply:

“The young man who was to inherit the estate was to have the bride. It mattered nothing to me whether that were Magnus or Lionel; but the hand of my heiress was to be bestowed upon the heir of Hemlock Hollow. That was the treaty. So I reminded old Mr. Hardcastle. He remembered that it really was so, and fully and entirely agreed with me. Young Lionel Hardcastle is also conformable. You only are contumacious. But I have pledged myself to your consent, and, by Heaven, you shall redeem my pledge. Listen, minion! You never leave this room until you leave it as the wife of Lionel Hardcastle. Curious place for a marriage ceremony! but, come, it does not matter; we can have the wedding afterward. You were to be the wife of Dr. Hardcastle, as you very respectfully call him, on Thursday week. Ha! ha! ha! Come, what do you think of your prospects of marrying him now?”

“Father, as far as my marriage with Dr. Hardcastle on Thursday week is concerned, my fate has gone out of my hands and into God’s! I have no more to say about that.”

“Ha! ha! I should think not. Not quite so confident as you were an hour ago, hey?”

“But, father, forgive me for reminding you that as far as marriage with any other person is concerned, that is entirely in my hands for refusal. Church and State very properly make the bride’s consent an indispensable preliminary to marriage, and even a vital part of the marriage ceremony. And my consent can never be gained to marry Lionel.”

“Ha! my pretty piece of stubbornness, we shall see. Pray, do you know—have you ever felt the power of solitary imprisonment, cold, and hunger, in bringing a contumacious girl to docility?”

Elsie’s face flushed, more for him than herself.

He continued:

“For all those mighty engines can I spring upon you! And will I, by Satan and all his hosts!”

“Father, you may do that, and nature may faint and succumb to their power. I am very strong, but those things you threaten me with may be stronger still. But, father, if ever I am left with strength enough to stand before the minister with Lionel Hardcastle by my side, when that minister shall ask me whether I will promise to love, honor, and obey him till death, I shall answer, ‘No, I do not love him, I never did, I never shall. If I stand here to be married to him, it is to please my father, his father, and not myself! And so I cannot tell a falsehood, far less vow one in God’s presence about it. I love Dr. Hardcastle, to whom you all know that I have been long engaged. I always did love him, and always shall,’ and then let the minister of God marry us, if he durst.”

With a furious oath he sprang upon her—seized her—the idea of strangling her upon the instant darted through his brain; but he only shook her with frenzied violence, and holding her in his terrible grip, said, with a husky voice and ashen cheek, and gleaming eye:

“If you were to do so, girl, as God in heaven hears me, I would kill you!”

And she felt to the very core of her shuddering heart that he told the truth. Then he dropped her, and threw himself out of the room, leaving her there, half dead with cold and fright, in the miserably bleak attic, without a spark of fire or light, for the lamp had been blown out by the fury with which her father had banged the door.