Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 5, November 1852

At last, however, she seemed to understand, and with a sudden burst of indignation, and flashing eyes, she exclaimed,

“Who are you, that dare say such a thing? It is false! I know it is false! Brentford is true – he is honorable. I say, how dare you come here with that foul, despicable slander against him, my noble husband?”

She stood directly before her visitant, and clasped her cold hands together very tightly, that she might not seem to tremble. The black eyes looked mournfully and steadily on her, as the stranger replied,

“Poor girl! I dare come here and tell you this, because I know it is the truth, and I would save an innocent young fellow-being from disgrace and misery. I know one who, five years ago, was as light-hearted a creature as ever trilled a song. Then she met Bernal Brentford. He flattered her. He sang with her. He said he loved her. He took her away from her happy, happy home in the sunny south, and carried her to the city. There he squandered her fortune, and deserted her.

“Could I be human and suffer another poor heart to be murdered in this same way?”

As she spoke she drew a paper from her pocket, and handed it to Clara, who had sunk down into a chair, pale and speechless. She took it, and opened it mechanically. It was a record of the marriage of Bernal Brentford and Bertha Vale, signed and attested in due form. She read it, again and again, then said, suddenly,

“How do I know that this is genuine?”

“There are witnesses, to whom you can refer, if you care to. The means of proof are ample.”

Clara’s ear caught the sound of a well-known footfall on the stairs.

“You are Bertha Vale?” said she.

“Yes.”

“Sit in that recess, and be silent.”

Summoning all the fortitude of her nature, Clara resumed the book which she had dropped on the entrance of the stranger, and threw herself, in a careless attitude, on the sofa. She was glad of its support – for it seemed to her she should sink to the ground. Brentford entered, and approached her with some playful speech. But as he crossed the floor, his eye fell on the shadow of the figure in the recess. He looked at it and stood aghast. Then in a voice tremulous with passion, he cried,

“How on earth came you here?”

She made no reply, and Clara said, very calmly,

“Why should the lady not be here? She called to see me.”

“You called to see her!” he exclaimed, advancing toward the intruder, and glaring fiercely on her, “You shall not see her, you shall not speak a word to her! Get you hence!”

She rose, saying simply, “I am ready to go.”

“I tell you, Bertha Vale,” hissed her husband in her ear, “if you ever cross my path again, you shall bitterly rue it!”

Her eye fixed itself unwaveringly on his as he spoke, while her small hand freed her arm from the grasp he had taken on it. She did not speak, and casting one pitying glance on Clara, glided out of the room. Brentford stared after her as she went, then walked to the window, to see, apparently, whether she went into the street. There he stood, motionless, for several minutes, then, placing himself, with folded arms, before the faded form upon the sofa, demanded,

“What did she say to you?”

She raised her pallid face from the hands in which it had been hidden, and said sorrowfully,

“I cannot tell what she did say, but she made me know that I have been deceived, and I want to go home.

“Yes, yes, I must go home,” she murmured to herself.

“No, no, she lied, I say. You shall not go – would you go and desert your own Brentford, dearest?”

“You are not mine,” said she, putting away the arm with which he would have encircled her, “you are another woman’s. I want to go home.”

She raised herself and strayed toward the table, where her bonnet lay. Brentford sprang after her and seized her hand, pouring forth a torrent of remonstrance, denial, invective, and command, in the utmost confusion. But Clara’s inexorable will was, for once, her good angel; and, whether he raved or implored, she was still firm. Although so weak and trembling that she could hardly support herself, she suffered him to see nothing but cold, strong resolve; but as she opened the door to go, and saw his look of dark despair, she hesitated, and gave him her hand, saying —

“I do forgive you, Brentford.”

But the gleam of hope that shot into his eyes admonished her, and she quickly shut the door and ran down stairs, without stopping to think, and was soon seated in a carriage and rattling rapidly away.

—

CHAPTER X

How like an angel’s sigh of loving pity that summer’s wind breathed on the cheek of the sufferer! How kindly the crimson sunset clouds tried to shed their own glow on its pallor, and even to fill with light the tear that glittered on it. The blush roses, too, that swayed to and fro at the open window, vied with each other who should kiss the thin, white hand that rested on the sill; and her sad eyes beamed forth a grateful blessing on them all, as she lay there, like a child, in her father’s arms.

His face bore a strange contrast to the mournful gentleness of hers; for his dark, heavy brows were knit, and his lips compressed, as though in anger; yet that firm lip quivered, as he said, tenderly —

“How much you have suffered, my poor child! No wonder that it has made you sick and delirious!”

“I have suffered no more than I deserved,” murmured Clara.

“But how did the man try to extenuate his villany?” exclaimed her father, with a sudden flash of indignation from his dark eyes.

“Don’t speak harshly, dear father?” whispered she. “He confessed, at last, that he was married, but said he had long ceased to love; and then, he loved me – so madly!”

A smile of pure scorn curled Doctor Gregory’s lip, and he clasped his child closer in his arms, as he exclaimed —

“Thank God, my daughter, you are safe in your father’s arms once more!”

“Oh, I am thankful,” said Clara, earnestly, raising her tearful eyes to her father’s face, “and I do hope that I may be a better child to you than I have ever been. I have been proud and selfish, but I do think that I am humbled now. Ah! how much I owe you, my father, to atone for the grief I have caused you. It seems to me, now, so strange that I could be so undutiful! I lived long in those few days I was absent from you – and, then,” she added, hesitating, “there is another thing for which I ought to make a long and sad confession – I have been most unkind to her you gave me in my mother’s stead. I have felt it all as I have lain upon my bed, and watched her noiseless footsteps stealing about, ministering to me. I have suffered for it as I have felt her cool, soft hand upon my burning forehead – and, most of all, have I repented it, as I have noticed the beautiful delicacy with which she avoids the most remote allusion to my ingratitude and folly.”

“God bless you, my child!” breathed Doctor Gregory, with deep emotion. “I trusted long to your good sense to correct the evil which I so much mourned. I pitied you – for I knew, but too well, whence you inherited the self-will that was your bane. But your heart is the victor, at last,” and a glow of satisfaction lighted his countenance, as he bowed his manly head to kiss the sweet face that rested on his breast. “But you will have great disappointment and loneliness to sustain, my dear Clara. I fear you will be very unhappy.”

Clara gazed cheerfully and seriously into her father’s face as she replied —

“I think I have learned to be happy in the love of home, and I shall delight in trying to repay the long forbearance and gentleness of my Step-Mother.”

SHAWLS

—

FROM HOUSEHOLD WORDS

—

In that part of Asia, where some of our brave countrymen have penetrated only to die – in that country where Charles Stoddart and his friend Conolly, whose faces will never be forgotten by some of us, and whose voices still sound in our ears, consoled each other through a loathsome imprisonment, and went out together to lose their heads in the market-place of the capital; in that distant and impracticable country of Bokhara, which we are ready to say we will never have any connection with – there are people always employed in our service. We are not now thinking of the Bokhara clover, which is such a treat to our cows and horses. We owe that, and lucerne, and others of our green crops, to the interior of Asia; but we are thinking of something more elaborate. In Bokhara, the camel is watched while the fine hair on the belly is growing: this fine hair is cut off so carefully that not a fibre is lost; it is put by until there is enough to spin into a yarn, unequalled for softness, and then it is dyed all manner of bright colors, and woven in strips eight inches wide of shawl patterns, such as – with all our pains and cost, with all our Schools of Design, and study of nature and art – we are not yet able to rival. These strips are then sewn together so cunningly that no European can discover the joins. The precious merchandise is delivered to traders who receive it on credit. On their return from market, they pay the price of the shawls at the Bokhara value, with 30 per cent. interest; or, if they cannot do this in consequence of having been robbed, or of any other misfortune, they stay away, and are never seen again in their native land.

Where is this market? – So far away from home that the traders wear out their clothes during their journey, and their fair skins become as brown as mulattoes. On, on, on they go, day after day, month after month, on their pacing camels or beside them, over table-lands mounting one above another; over grass, among rocks, over sand, through snows; now chilled to the marrow by icy winds; now scorched by sunshine, from which there is no shelter but the flat cotton caps with which they thatch their bare crowns: on, on, for fifteen thousand miles, to the borders of Russia, to sell the shawls which are to hang on ladies’ shoulders in Hyde Park, and where beauties most do congregate in Paris and Vienna.

The passion for shawls among all women everywhere is remarkable. In one country, the shawl may flow from the head like a veil; in another, it hangs from the shoulders; in another, it is knotted round the loins as a sash; in yet another, it is swathed round the body as a petticoat. Wherever worn at all, it is the pet article of dress. From a time remote beyond computation, the sheep of Cashmere have been cherished on their hills, and the goats of Thibet on their plains, and the camels of Tartary on their steppes, to furnish material for the choicest shawls. From time immemorial, the patterns which we know so well have been handed down in a half-sacred tradition through a Hindoo ancestry, which puts even Welsh pedigrees to shame. For thousands of years have the bright dyes, which are the despair of our science and art, been glittering in Indian looms, in those primitive pits under the palm-tree, where the whimsical patterns grow like the wildflower springing from the soil. For thousands of years have Eastern potentates made presents of shawls to distinguished strangers, together with diamonds and pearls.