So calmly and dispassionately had the countess answered her attendant's
indignant exclamation. But as soon as Berenice reached her own chamber
she dismissed her maid, locked her door, and gave herself up to a
passion of grief.
It was but a trifle--that coarse speech of a thoughtless old woman--a
mere trifle; but it overwhelmed her, coming, as it did, after all that
had gone before. It was but the last feather, you know, only a single
feather laid on the pack that broke the camel's back. It was but a drop
of water, a single drop, that made the full cup overflow!
Added to bereavement, desertion, loneliness, slander, ingratitude, had
come this little bit of insolence to overthrow the firmness that had
stood all the rest. And Berenice wept.
She had left home, friends, and country for one who repaid the sacrifice
by leaving her. She had lavished her wealth upon those who received her
bounty with suspicion and repaid her kindness with ingratitude. She had
lived a life as blameless and as beneficent as that of any old time
saint or martyr, and had won by it nothing but detraction and calumny.
Her parents were dead, her husband gone, her native land far away, her
hopes were crushed. No wonder she wept. And then the countess was out of
her sphere; as much out of her sphere in the woods of Maryland as Hans
Christian Andersen's cygnet was in the barnyard full of fowls. She was a
swan, and they took her for a deformed duck. And at last she herself
began to be vaguely conscious of this.
"Why do I remain here?" she moaned; "what strange magnetic power is it
that holds my very will, fettered here, against my reason and judgment?
That has so held me for long years? Yes, for long, weary years have I
been bound to this cross, and I am not dead yet! Heavenly Powers! what
are my nerves and brain and heart made of that I am not dead, or mad, or
criminal before this? Steel, and rock, and gutta percha, I think! Not
mere flesh and blood and bone like other women's? Oh, why do I stay
here? Why do I not go home? I have lost everything else; but I have
still a home and country left! Oh, that I could break loose! Oh, that I
could free myself! Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, for then I would
fly away and be at rest!'" she exclaimed, breaking into the pathetic
language of the Psalmist.
A voice softly stole upon her ear, a low, plaintive voice singing a
homely Scotch song: "'Oh, it's hame, hame, hame,
Hame fain would I be;
But the wearie never win back
To their ain countrie.'"