Chapter III: The Father’s Tyranny

An thou be mine, I’ll give thee to my friend!
An thou be not, hang, beg, starve, die i’ the streets,
Nor what is mine shall ever do thee good,
Trust to it, bethink you! I’ll not be forsworn!
_—Shakspere._

Sinclair! Sinclair! Where in the world was he? Where had he been so many days? Why did he not come? Alice could have given the world to have seen him.

She did not know that he had been forbidden the house. She was totally ignorant of everything that had passed between her father and himself. She walked wildly about the house and grounds, instinctively avoiding her feeble mother’s room, lest in her present distracted state she should kill her with agitation; afraid of meeting her father, and doubly afraid of encountering General Garnet, and wishing and praying—oh! praying, as if for dear life, that she might meet Sinclair.

One afternoon she wrote a wild letter to him, illegible and unintelligible every way except in this—that he must “come to Mount Calm immediately.” She sent the letter off, and walked up and down her chamber, trying to get calm enough to go and see her mother. While thus employed a message reached her from her mother, desiring her to come to her room. Alice went immediately. As she entered the dark chamber Mrs. Chester called her up to the side of her bed; she saw that her mother’s countenance had changed fearfully since the morning, and now a new terror and remorse seized her heart; she was about to speak, when Mrs. Chester said:

“Alice, you look frightfully pale and haggard, my dear child. Alice, we were foiled this morning. Your father has been here, and told me all about it—the projected marriage in a week, and all; but do not fear, my dear child, you shall not be sacrificed; it is not right. I have sent a message to Mr. Sinclair to come here this evening. He has not been here for some time, and when he comes I must have a talk with him.”

At this moment a servant entered the chamber, to whom Mrs. Chester turned, saying:

“Milly, mix a teaspoonful of ether with a little water, and hand it to Miss Alice. She is not well. You must take it, Alice, dear; you are really very ill, and it will compose your nerves.”

“Mr. Sinclair is downstairs, madam, and wants to know if he may come up,” said the girl, as she handed the glass to Alice.

Alice dropped the glass, untasted.

“Where is General Garnet?” said Mrs. Chester.

“In the library, writing, madam.”

“Where is Colonel Chester?”

“Gone out riding, madam.”

“Thank Heaven! Yes, request Mr. Sinclair to come up, Milly.”

After the departure of the girl the mother and daughter remained in silent expectation. At last the light, quick footstep of Sinclair was heard upon the stairs.

“Go and meet him, Alice, my darling,” said the mother, with a smile.

Alice arose, and as he opened the door and advanced into the room, started forward and threw herself weeping into his arms. What could he do but press her to his bosom? Then he led her back to her mother’s bedside—stooped over the sick lady, taking her hand, and inquiring tenderly, respectfully, after her health of body and soul. While she was making her gentle, patient reply, the attention of all three was arrested by the noise of heavy, hurried footsteps hastening up the stairs.

“It is your father, Alice! Oh, God, save us!” exclaimed Mrs. Chester, just as Colonel Chester, with one violent kick of his boot, burst open the door, and, purple and convulsed with rage, stood among them.

“Who admitted this man? Who sent for him?” he demanded, in a furious voice.

“I did. I sent for him,” said the mother, pale with fear and feebleness, but wishing to shield her daughter.

“I did! I wrote him a note,” murmured the daughter, in a dying voice, sick with terror, but wishing to save her mother.

“Traitors! Shameless household traitors! so there are a pair of you! a desirable wife and daughter! a very suitable mother and daughter! But I’ll find a way to punish you both. I’ll——”

Here he was interrupted by Sinclair, who, turning to him, said, in a composed but stern voice:

“Colonel Chester, visit your anger and reproaches upon me, who knew of your prohibition, not upon those who possibly knew nothing about it.”

“You have the insolence to tell me, sir, to remind me, that you knew of my prohibition to cross my threshold! while standing here in my house, in the very heart of my house, my wife’s bedchamber!” exclaimed Colonel Chester furiously.

“In your wife’s sick-chamber, sir, where, as a Christian minister, it is my bounden duty sometimes to come.”

“And, d—— you, from whence I’ll put you out!” exclaimed the infuriated man.

“I will go. Good-evening, Mrs. Chester; good-evening, Alice. I leave you in the care of Heaven,” said Sinclair, wishing, by all means, to avoid the disgrace of a struggle.

“Go! what, go quietly like an honored guest dismissed? No, d—— you, you came surreptitiously, and you shall depart involuntarily. No, d—— you, I will put you out!” vociferated the maniac, in an ungovernable fury, springing upon Sinclair.

A violent struggle ensued. Sinclair acted entirely upon the defensive, saying, continually, as he could make himself heard:

“Colonel Chester, let me go! I will leave quietly; I would have done so at first.”

And now the deathly grip and struggle went on in silence, interrupted only by the short, curt, hissing exclamations of the enraged man through his now whitened lip and clenched teeth. Sinclair was half the age and double the weight and strength of his opponent, and could easily have mastered him, but did not want the odium of doing it.

While wrestling desperately on the defensive, he expostulated once more:

“Colonel Chester—not for my sake, but for your own—for your family’s, for honor’s sake, let me depart in peace!”

“Ah, villain!” exclaimed the madman, finding his strength failing, and suddenly drawing a pistol, he pointed it at Sinclair’s temple and fired. Sinclair suddenly started, and the bullet went through the window, shattering the glass. Chester now raised the spent pistol and aimed with it a violent blow upon Sinclair’s head. Sinclair quickly caught his descending hand, when——

A power more awful than the judge’s baton, the monarch’s scepter, or the priest’s elevated crucifix arrested the combat.

Death stood in their presence! A cry of mortal anguish from Alice caused both to turn and look—both to drop their hold—and stand like conscience-stricken culprits!

There lay Mrs. Chester, the gentle, patient, long-suffering woman, stricken down, dying in her daughter’s arms.

Colonel Chester came to his senses at once, feeling all the horror and remorse of a murderer.

And Sinclair repented from his soul that he had not permitted himself to be expelled from the house with every species of ignominy rather than to have seen this.

That ashen brow—those fixed eyes—that silent tongue, and quick, gasping breath! that face of the dying! it would never depart from his memory. Oh! any personal indignity rather than this memory! if he could but save her! but she was beyond all help now, for—even as full of sorrow and remorse he gazed—with a long, deep sigh, as for the pilgrims she left behind on earth, her spirit passed to God.

Sinclair bore Alice, fainting, from the room.

Colonel Chester fell down on his knees, dropping his head upon the bed, and throwing his arms over his dead wife in a paroxysm of remorse and despair, ungovernable as his rage had been, and, alas! nearly as transient!