Silently melted her life away
As ye have seen a rich flower decay,
Or a lamp that hath swiftly burned expire,
Or a bright stream shrink from a summer fire.”
Nearly maddened between the deeply suppressed, conflicting passions of wounded love, outraged pride, gloomy jealousy, fierce anger, and burning desire of revenge, Philip Helmstedt’s impetuous spirit would have devoured the time between his arrival at the island and Marguerite’s expected return. Now feeling, through the magic power of memory and imagination, the wondrous magnetism of her personality, and praying for her arrival only that all else might be forgotten in the rapture of their meeting—then, with all the force of his excessive pride and scorn, sternly spurning that desire as most unworthy. Now torturing himself with sinister speculations as to where she might be? what doing? with whom tarrying? Then feeling intensely, as resentfully, his indubitable right to know, and longing for her return that he might make her feel the power of the man whose affection and whose authority had been equally slighted and despised. And through all these moods of love and jealousy still invoking, ever invoking, with a breathless, burning impatience that would have consumed and shriveled up the intervening days—the hour of her return; for still he doted on her with a fatuity that neither possession nor time had power to sate, nor pride nor anger force to destroy—nay, that these agencies only goaded into frenzy. Strong man that he was, she possessed him like a fever, a madness, a shrouding fire! he could not deliver himself from the fascination of her individuality. Was she a modern Lamia, a serpent woman who held him, another Lexius, in her fatal toils? So it sometimes seemed to him as he walked moodily up and down the long piazza before the house, looking out upon the sea. At all events she held him! very well, let it be so, since he held her so surely, and she should feel it! Oh! for the hour of her return! All day he paced the long piazza or walked down to the beach, spyglass in hand, to look out for the packet that should bear her to the isle. But packet after packet sailed by, and day succeeded day until a month had passed, and still Marguerite came not. And day by day Philip Helmstedt grew darker, thinner, and gloomier. Sleep forsook his bed, and appetite his board; it often happened that by night his pillow was not pressed, and by day his meals were left untasted.
Speculation was rife among the servants of the household. All understood that something was wrong in the family. The Helmstedt servants took the part of their master, while the De Lancie negroes advocated the cause of their mistress. It was a very great trial to poor old Aunt Hapzibah, the housekeeper, to find her best efforts unavailing to make her master comfortable in the absence of her mistress. Every one likes to be appreciated; and no one more than an old family cook whose glory lies in her art; and so it proved too much for the philosophy of the old woman, who had taken much pride in letting “Marse Fillup see that eberyting went on as riglar as dough Miss Marget was home hersef”—to see her best endeavors unnoticed and her most recherché dishes untasted. And so—partly for her own relief, and partly for the edification of her underlings in the kitchen, she frequently held forth upon the state of affairs in something like the following style:
“De Lord bress de day an’ hour as ever I toted mysef inter dis here house! De Lord men’ it I pray! Wonner what Marse Fillup Hempseed mean a-scornin’ my bes’ cook dishes? Better not keep on a-’spisin’ de Lord’s good wittles—’deed hadn’ he if he is Marse Fillup Hempseed! Come to want bread if he does—’deed will he! Set him up! What he ’spect? Sen’ him young ducks an’ green peas? down dey comes ontotch! Try him wid lily white weal an’ spinnidge? down it come ontaste! Sen’ up spring chicken an’ sparrowgrass? all de same! I gwine stop of it now, I tell you good! ’deed is I. I ain’t gwine be fool long o’ Marse Fillup Hemps’d’s funnelly nonsense no longer! I gwine sen’ him up middlin’ and greens, or mutton an’ turnups—you hear me good, don’t you?”
“I wonder what does ail master?” remarked Hildreth.
“I know what ail him well ’nough! I know de reason why he won’t eat his wittles!”
“What is it, den?”