Chapter XXXII: Restitution

“Rouse to some high and holy work of love,
And thou an angel’s happiness shalt know;
Shalt bless the earth while in the world above;
The work, begun by thee, shall onward go
In many a branching stream and wider flow.”—_Carlos Wilcox._

A week after this, Mark Sutherland once more left home for a visit to Mississippi, on business. He went to make a final settlement with Clement Sutherland.

The miserable old man had fallen, almost into a state of idiotcy. He gave up all the title deeds and various documents relating to Rosalie’s estate, but could give little or no information concerning them.

The plantation was sold under the mortgage, and when all was done, and the final accounts cast up, Mark Sutherland found that of all his wife’s splendid fortune, but a paltry two thousand dollars was left.

With this, Mark Sutherland prepared to leave the neighbourhood of Cashmere. But the day that he had fixed for his departure was signalized by a catastrophe that delayed his journey for weeks. It was the dreadful death of St. Gerald Ashley, who, during a fit of mania-a-potu, threw himself from a second story window, and, striking his head upon the iron trellis below, was instantly killed.

India was distracted—Clement Sutherland helpless. And Mark remained at Cashmere to take the direction of the funeral.

Three days from the death, when all was over, Mark Sutherland sought the presence of the widow. He went to her with no tender condolements, but with the words of bitter truth and stern rebuke upon his lips. He found her in her faded and dingy boudoir.

She arose at his entrance, and held out her hand to welcome him, but before his own had touched it, she sank down in her chair, burst into tears, and covered her face with her hands.

He took a seat, and spoke:

“I come to you, Mrs. Ashley, with no vain words of sympathy, which would seem as untrue to your sense as they would _be_ upon my lips. I come merely to set before you the stern realities of your position, and, if possible, to awaken you to its duties and responsibilities.” He paused a moment, and she lifted up her head and tearful face, saying,

“Speak, Mark! you will not find me haughty now!”

His lips curled, and then he compressed them.

“Your husband is dead! You know too well what fatal power brought down that high, proud nature to dishonour and to death”——

“Speak—ay, speak—and spare not! I deserve it! Most of all, from you!” she exclaimed, in a voice of anguish.

“Yet, India, for the kindred blood in our mutual veins—for the regard I once bore you, and the anxiety I still feel for you—I would point out a way of recovery”——

“Tell me, Mark! tell me! Oh! I know that I have been guilty! but not wantonly guilty, as you think! God knoweth that I have not! _One_ mad, impatient act—_one_ frantic act—led to all the rest—ruined all my life and his!”

“Yet that act could not have been committed by any but an intensely selfish nature, India. I speak not to indulge in _vain_ reproaches, but to recall you to a sense of what you have already caused others to suffer, and to a consciousness of what you owe to others. You cannot now recall the past, but you are very young, and the long future is all yours. Your husband is dead, your father imbecile, and there is no one to take the direction of affairs on this plantation. You must rouse yourself from vain regret and indolent self-indulgence. You were not created to sit still and be waited upon. You must engage in the active duties of life. You must redeem the past by the future. You cannot now bring back St. Gerald Ashley from his dishonoured grave, and restore him to the brilliant and distinguished position from which he fell—but you can do somewhat to save his memory from reproach. He died heavily in debt. You have property of your own. This seat of Cashmere was secured to you on your marriage, leaving your father a life interest in it. I do not, therefore, mean _this_. But you have other property in your own right—devote it to the liquidation of Ashley’s debts. And more; when you estranged him from your bosom, he sought sympathy and affection from a poor girl who lives in the pine forest. I need not tell you the story; doubtless, you know it. If you do not, the theme is, unhappily, so common, that you can easily imagine it. What I mean to say is this: this poor, fallen girl is unprovided for, desolate, and heart-broken; and what I have to enjoin upon you is, that you seek out that poor victim of St. Gerald’s sin, and make such a provision for herself and child as will save her from despair and deeper vice.”

“And if I do all this—if I spend all that I have in clearing St. Gerald’s memory from debt, and if I take this poor girl and her child under my protection—will you think of me more leniently than you do? Will you restore me your esteem?”

“My thoughts, my esteem, should be no motive with you. I never asked you to do this for _my_ sake. I would not ask you to do it for heaven’s sake; but simply I enjoin you to do it because it is _right_, whether I ever remember your existence again or not.”

“Oh! Mark, I will do it. But you have not learned of Him, that divine, compassionate One, who would not break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax!”

She raised her eyes tearfully, doubtingly, to his face.

“Is there anything else, Mark?” she asked.

“Yes, India, your people; remember, that if your life should be cut off before you emancipate them, when your soul is in the spiritual world, you will see those whom you have left on earth, doomed, with their children and their children’s children, to a bondage, from which you have no longer the power and the privilege to free them. Oh! I think, India, it is a fearful responsibility, it is an awful one, to die and leave them so—to let the power of righting their wrongs pass away from you forever.”

“To do all this it would require nearly all my means—it would leave me very poor.”

“_Be_ poor! _let_ all go but peace of mind.”

She paused a long time with her head bowed upon her hands. At last she looked up, and stretched her hand out to him, and said—

“Mark, is this all that you require of me?”

“No; your father is imbecile in mind, and no longer capable of directing even his most trivial affairs. You must apply to the court for the necessary authority, and take the control of his estate. I will remain here a few weeks longer to aid you in obtaining it, and in settling up the accounts. You will find many a just debt which nevertheless cannot legally be recovered of him. You must pay them all without flinching, though the settlement should leave you penniless. You must right every wrong that he has done, or others suffered through him.”

He had not taken the hand she had held out to him a few minutes before. It had fallen unheeded at her side. Yet now she laid it in his, as she asked:

“And if I do all this that you demand, _then_ will you give me back regard?”

He looked disappointed and annoyed, and dropped her hand, as he replied:

“If the fountain be not sweet, how shall the stream be? If the motive be not pure, how shall the act be? India! do not seek to make a trader’s bargain with heaven, or even with me! I have not asked you to do this from the fear of any punishment, or the hope of any reward; I have not required it at your hands for God’s sake, least of all for mine; I have simply demanded it in the name of the RIGHT! India! there is a sentiment expressed, a principle laid down, or a prayer made, by one of our poets, which, for sublime simplicity, transcends everything not written in the Holy Scriptures. It is contained in the lines of Pope’s Universal Prayer:

“‘What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do—
_This_ teach me more than _hell_ to shun,
_That_ more than _heaven_ pursue.’

“There is no clap-trap there, India; it is a sublime rule! Lay it to heart!”

He had arisen, and was about to leave the room, but seeing her arms crossed upon the table, and her head fallen upon them in an attitude of the most desolate grief, he turned back, and laying his hand kindly upon the bowed head, he said:

“Dear India, I am writing to Rosalie; shall I tell her to come down and remain with you for a few weeks?”

“No, no! not now! I could not bear her presence here; it would bring back the memory of happier days, in too dreadful contrast with these. Not now! It is very dark, life is very dark to me, and I am very weak and miserable!”

“Dearest India! I wish you would let her come to you—would let her lead you to the only true source of light, and strength, and joy!”

“I cannot! I can _die_!”

“She would teach you to live; she would teach her truth, that ‘out of the _heart_ are the issues of life’”—

“And of _death_!” said India, in a hollow voice.

Then he could only press her hand, and leave her.

Mark Sutherland remained three weeks longer in the neighbourhood of Cashmere. During his stay he lodged at the village of C., because he found it impossible to remain at Cashmere, where the presence of India, in her grief and desolation, seemed to scorch his very soul like a spiritual fire. He laboured very industriously, and, with the assistance of efficient lawyers and clerks, reduced the chaos of the Cashmere accounts into something like order, and made the way straight for the future course of India and her attorney. At the end of the third week he completed his work, and bade adieu to India and to Cashmere.

And in twelve days he was at home again. He was met near the house by Billy, who, with two baskets upon his arms, was proceeding upon some household errand.

“Well! and so it’s you, is it!” observed that functionary, setting down his baskets. “And so you’ve comed at last!”

“How is your mistress, Billy?” inquired Mr. Sutherland.

“Not bein’ of a nigger, hain’t got no missus. Ef you means _her_, in yonder, how does you ’spects her to be being, along o’ the school and the head-eat-oriels, and the clients? You better go see how she is! Yes, and I can tell you, you better go see arter your paper, _too_! or you won’t have any ’scribers left!”

“Why, how so?”

“Humph! how so? Why Mr. Bolling, he took it into his head as he’d write a great head-eat-oriel leader—I could o’done it as well myself ef I’d had anybody to take down my words in writin’—’cause I used to be a _class_ leader, or least way I used to belong to a class. Well, unbeknownest to Mrs. Sutherland, Mr. Bolling he puts on his spectacles and sits down to write a leader. Lord, it took him a week, and then it took a whole side of the paper to print it! And when it come out—ugh! whew! brikey! my eyes! ef it didn’t put the whole town and county into a hubbub. _Every_body was mad, and threatened to stop their paper—the Dimocrats said how you’d turned Whig; and the Whigs said you’d turned Dimocrat; and the Consarvatives said you’d become a revolutioniser and a ’cendiary; and the Free-S’ilers said how you’d betrayed your pairty! If you could get ’lected to a lamp-lighter’s place _this_ go, _I’m_ a Hunker!” said Billy, hitching up his baskets, and trudging off towards the town. Very much disturbed by what he had heard, Mark Sutherland hastened on homeward. That his paper was injured, and his income diminished, were comparatively small matters; that his election was lost, was not a very great one; but that public confidence was shaken, and his influence impaired, was a misfortune. Anathematising Mr. Bolling’s both-side-isms, which now seemed to have reached _all_-side-ism, he passed through the green gate leading into his own lawn.

Rosalie, who had seen his approach from afar, came down from the house to meet him. She looked smiling and happy, as she gave him both her hands. Her cheerful confidence raised his hopes. He greeted her fondly, and then drew her arm within his own. And as they walked slowly back to the house—

“Well, Rosalie!” he said, “what about this confounded editorial of Mr. Bolling’s? It is not enough, it seems, that he should be a kill-joy in the house and by the fireside, but he must be a mar-plot abroad, and an evil genius to our business!”

Rosalie laughed gaily.

“Oh, it is nothing,” she said; “it was just one of Mr. Bothsides’ grand, broad, impartial manifestoes. It took our people, both friends and opponents, very much by surprise, perplexed them not a little, and finally made them laugh. No one, for an instant, could have attributed such a leader to you, even if they had not been advised of your absence and exclusive engagement elsewhere. Besides, in to-day’s paper the publisher explains that the article was from the pen of a transient contributor. Why do you still look so grave? It is not possible that poor, daft Billy has really alarmed you with his gossip. Psha! even innocents of Billy’s mental calibre could scarcely impute the sentiments of that foolish leader to you.”

Grave! Well he might look grave; but not upon the subject of leading editorials, public sentiment, popular applause, or popular execration. He wondered now, how such trifles could have discomposed him. There _she_ was—the angel of his life—walking by his side, leaning on his arm, looking very smiling and happy, talking cheerily, laughing sweetly; but, oh! that face was so fair and wan—that pearly forehead so greatly developed, so polished from the tension of the skin—those large, shadowy eyes, so deeply luminous—those crimson flushes in the hollow cheek, so intense and fiery—that whole countenance, irradiated with such unearthly, supernal light! Why should he look grave? He answered her question in some trivial way—said he was not grave, or something to that effect, and put on a look and manner of ease and light-heartedness—strangers, alas! to his bosom, from this time forward many a day! He did not now express any anxiety, or care, or thought about her health! he did not even ask her how she was; for oh! such feelings had suddenly grown too deep, too real, too painful to be spoken. He did not support her steps with his usual tenderness and solicitude. A sort of fierce jealousy and antagonism to disease and death took possession of him—a sort of instinct that, by denying their existence, he might disable their might—a kind of feeling that, by disbelieving Rosalie’s weakness, and disallowing her yielding to disease, he might save her from the power of death.

With more refined spiritual insight than he possessed, Rosalie perceived his thoughts and emotions; and, as much as possible, avoided giving him pain. She never betrayed weariness, if the exercise of the greatest fortitude and patience could conceal her sufferings; she never complained, never even alluded to her mortal illness.