CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE WOUNDED EAGLE.

“Eagle, this is not thy sphere! Warrior bird! what dost thou here? Wherefore by the fountain’s brink Dost thy royal pinion sink? Wherefore on the violet’s bed Lay’st thou thus thy drooping head? Thou, that hold’st the blast in scorn— Thou, that bear’st the wings of morn! Lift thy glance! The fiery sun Now his pride of place hath won! And sweet sound hath filled the air, For the mountain lark is there. Looking on thine own bright skies— Eagle! wilt thou not arise?” HEMANS.

The spring and summer had passed, and autumn was at hand, yet Hagar had received no letter, or message, or news of her husband. True, the foreign mail was very irregular, interrupted, and uncertain, for those were not the days of steamships, and Emily had not heard from her brother for several months. Hagar bore the slow torture of suspense as well as she could, occupying herself with the care of her three children. She was abandoned to a life that would have been utter solitude, but for the society of her children and the attendance of her servants. At first coming home, she had regularly attended divine service at the parish church; but seeing that her presence there merely drew off the attention of the congregation from their ritual to gaze her out of countenance, as though she had been a monster, and feeling, besides, a difficulty in worshipping among a set of people, who, from malice or thoughtlessness, had slandered and forsaken her, she discontinued her attendance upon the preaching, thereby giving occasion for fresh calumny. The hours not occupied with her family cares were occasionally spent in the pursuits of her old and favorite pastimes, her forest hunts with horse and hounds, or her fishing excursions in a light skiff propelled by one oar. But she liked best her exhilarating woodland sports with their lifegiving power. The resumption of these healthful but half savage habits, gave additional offence to the conventional autocrats of —— county. In her rides she seldom met any one, because her excursions were confined to the Heath and woodlands of her own ruined plantation; so seldom, that when it happened, the person who had seen her would say, “I have met Hagar Withers,” in much the same tone that you might exclaim, “I have encountered the sea-serpent.” And the hearer would cry “Indeed! where?” with as much astonishment in the first case as they might be supposed to feel in the last. It happened that the first person who had met her in her riding costume was that princess of propriety, Mrs. Gardiner Green, who, taking a hasty inventory of her short, black, boyish looking curls clustering around her forehead and under her little riding cap, and the rolling collar, steel buttons, and coat-sleeves of her habit, had gone away and reported as follows: “She has cut off her hair, and dresses like _a man_!” In her perfect isolation, Hagar heard nothing of all this latter talk.

I said that God was a kind father and Nature a tender, nursing mother; and that our Hagar was getting well under their care. And so it was. In spite of all her past wrongs, griefs, and sufferings, in defiance of all her present regrets, suspense, and anxieties, her spirits had rebounded from their long pressure; health, strength, and life were tiding back. The first of October found her form erect and robust, her limbs full and rounded, her cheeks crimson, and her eye brilliant with high health; and Hagar, in her returning joy, blessed her native air, woods, and waters; praised nature, and worshipped God for her resurrection from the dead, her restoration to the young exultant life of her glad childhood. And what were her plans for the future, and what were her thoughts of her husband? Perhaps wearied with the weight of the incessant thoughts, her mind had thrown off the burden; perhaps rebounding from the long and heavy pressure, her spirits had sprung away from the painful subject; perhaps with the natural wildness of her character she had yielded herself up with childish carelessness to the enjoyments of the present moment. She was disturbed in the midst of her enjoyments by the arrival of a letter bearing a foreign stamp. She found it lying on her plate when she took her seat at the breakfast-table one morning. It had been brought by Tarquinius from the Post Office late on the previous night, after she had gone to rest. She snatched the letter hastily, and tearing open its seal, read—why do Hagar’s cheeks flush, her eyes blaze with indignation? The letter conveyed a gross and degrading charge, a humiliating and cruel proposition, and a startling and alarming threat! yet withal, so cautiously written, as were it produced in any court, it would be difficult to convict the _writer_ of any more serious offence than outraged affection and injured confidence. It ran thus:

“GENOA, July 15th, 182-.

“HAGAR:—I have just received your letter, with its strange communications—_confessions_, I should rather call them; had such a blow fallen on me a year ago, when I did not know you so well, when I esteemed and loved you, it would have gone nigh to destroy me! even now when I can esteem you no longer, it has given me the deepest pain, more for your sake than for my own, and more upon our children’s account than either. Hagar, was it that Satan, after having tempted you to evil, abandoned you to idiocy; was it fatuity? or, was it the goading of a wounded conscience that drove you to make these shameful revelations to me? Or, as is most likely, did you hope by being the _first_ to tell me of what was inevitable, that with or without your communications, I must soon hear, and by giving your own version of the doings at the Rialto, you could thus blind me as to the _real_ state of the case? If you thought so, Hagar, you yourself were the victim of gross self-deception. I will not reproach while judging and condemning you, Hagar; that were vain and unworthy, but before pronouncing sentence, I will sum up the evidence of your guilt as given in your own unconscious confession, and out of your own mouth condemn you, for, however you may attempt to glaze over the facts, they stand thus: No sooner has your husband quitted his home, upon his official duties, than lo! his place in your house is filled by the lover of your girlhood, Lieutenant May, who, without delay, hastens over five hundred miles of sea and land to join you: he remains with you domesticated under your roof for weeks, and until the house is sold over your heads, while every respectable female servant quits the premises. He takes you from the neighborhood where I had left you, and where I expected when I should return to find you, and carries you off to Maryland. On the night of your arrival, under favor of the storm, you pass the night alone together in the old fishing-house, within an eighth of a mile of Heath Hall, which you might have reached in ten minutes. Then your neighbors, shocked and justly indignant at the audacious effrontery of this shameless disregard of public sentiment, have very properly abandoned you.

“Now, then, Hagar, hear me! Since your betrayal of these disgraceful circumstances to my knowledge, I feel a re-union between us to be impossible. _You_ must see and feel this also—nay, you yourself could not desire it. Our marriage must be annulled. _I_ could do it by widely exposing your guilt, and bringing you to open shame. I am unwilling to take this course, unless by rejecting the only alternative that I have to offer, you leave me no other. This alternative will veil your guilt from the general eye—it is a self immolating proposition on my part, as I prefer to suffer in myself the unmerited condemnation of society, rather than have the mother of my children, however well she may deserve the fate, consigned to ignominy. My proposition, in a word, is _this_—that _you yourself_ annul our marriage—that you divorce _me_—you can do it upon the plea of my desertion of you—suppose that plea was false when I left the country, it is true _now_ that I have detected your infidelity—urge that plea—your suit will not be rejected, for the reason that I shall not oppose it—_Do_ it, Hagar! and in return, after it _is_ done, I will bind myself to leave you in quiet possession of your home and children for the remainder of our lives—_Refuse_ to do it, Hagar! and I will return to the United States, and with the terrible array of circumstances that can be marshalled against you, I will overwhelm you, divorce and degrade you, and when that is effected, remove my children from the care of a dishonored woman, whom private experience, public sentiment, legal justice, and legislative wisdom shall have alike condemned, as unworthy of their charge. I await your reply, Hagar.

R. W.”

I wish you could have seen Hagar as she read this letter—how much more courageous she was in the endurance than in the anticipation of this evil. You would have felt how strong she had grown in her sorrows, how nobly she had struggled, and how grandly she had soared above them. How, after the first start and flash of indignation, she had read the letter through, and holding it open on her lap, looked straight before her with that air of calm superiority, of grave rebuke, with which one regards the ravings of intoxication.

“I will not reply to this just yet,” said Hagar, to herself—and folding the letter, she put it in her pocket and fell into a reverie. It was during this reverie that Hagar was inspired with a resolution, and formed a highly important plan, which, in a few weeks, she prepared to carry into effect.