Married or Single?

Catharine Maria

Sedgwick

In one volume,

from the 1857

Harper & Brothers

two volume edition

Contents

About this edition

Married or Single?

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Colophon

About this edition

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867) was an American novelist and short story writer who wrote mainly “Domestic Fiction.” Her work was popular from the 1820s to the 1850s, but by the end of the 19th century her work was hardly read. In the 1960s feminist scholars led renewed interest in her work.

She was born into a rich upper class Puritan family, and later joined the Unitarian Church. Her religious beliefs are often mentioned in her writings, including her acceptance of the beliefs of others, and acceptance of people of other races.

Married or Single? was Miss Sedgwick’s last novel, and was published ten years before her death. It is set in a New York in which Harlem was a country suburb, there were obvious social classes, and there had been many Irish immigrants. The plot is complex, and she writes ‘we raise our voice … against the miserable cant that matrimony is essential to the feebler sex … that a woman’s single life must be useless or undignified, … that she is but an adjunct of man.’

The source text was taken from the University of Virginia Library via the On Line Books page, and checked against other versions. I have silently corrected typos, curled quotes, replaced italics, used American English, and made changes to spelling and hyphenation using the Cambridge American English Dictionary.

Preface

The want of an innocent occupation may be reason enough why one should write, but some better reason or a plausible apology should be rendered for inflicting the writing upon the public; for if the public, in the large sense, is not obliged to read, there is a small public of kind friends, who feel a moral obligation to perform that duty. And a hard duty it may be when the novel readers’ market is supplied by such producers as Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Reade, and Mrs Gaskell (all honor, praise, and love be to her), and our own popular writers in this department. If we do not specify Mrs Stowe, it is that she writes for all humanity. Her books cannot be restricted to any class of readers, nor claimed exclusively by any department of literature.

The writer of “Married or Single?” has the fears and faltering of a stranger in appearing before the present public. The generation known to her, and which extended a welcome and a degree of favor to her, has, for the most part, passed away. Most of those friends are gone, whose hearts vibrated (without the vanities or selfishness of personality) to her success, and she is left to feel the chill and dreariness of the “banquet hall deserted.” Still, she has friends who speak the Godspeed, and young friends who will receive the fruits of her observation of the defects and wants of our social life with ingenuousness, and perhaps with some profit; and possibly there are those who will relish better a glass of water from our own fountains, than a draught of French concoction, whose enticing flavor but disguises its insidious poison.

It might seem natural and decorous, that one approaching the limit of human life should – if writing at all – write a book, strictly religious, but the novel (and to that guild we belong) does not seem to us the legitimate vehicle of strictly religious teaching. Secular affairs should be permeated by the spirit of the altar and the temple, but not brought within the temple’s holy precincts.

One word more – the moral of our story – to our young feminine readers. We have given (we confess, after some disposition to rebel), the most practical proof of our allegiance to the ancient laws of romance, by making our hero and heroine man and wife, duly and truly. Omnia rité et solenné acta sunt. We shall not, therefore, be suspected of irreverence to the great law of Nature, by which, in every province of her infinitely various kingdom, all “kindred drops are melted into one.”

But we raise our voice with all our might against the miserable cant that matrimony is essential to the feebler sex – that a woman’s single life must be useless or undignified – that she is but an adjunct of man – in her best estate a helm merely to guide the nobler vessel. Aside from the great tasks of humanity, for which masculine capacities are best fitted, we believe she has an independent power to shape her own course, and to force her separate sovereign way. Happily no illustration is needed at this day, to prove that maidens can perform with grace and honor, duties from which wives and mothers are exempted by their domestic necessities. Our sisters of mercy and charity, however they may be called, are limited to no faith and to no peculiar class of ministrations. Their smiles brighten the whole world.

But we speak especially to those of our maidens whose modesty confines their efficiency to the circle which radiates from their home. We pray such to remember that their sex’s share of the sterner sacrifices, as well as the softer graces of Christian love, does not belong alone to the noble Florence Nightingales of our day, any more than the real glories of feminine heroism were once all bound to the helmet of Joan of Arc. It is not in the broad and noisy fields sought by the apostles of “Woman’s Rights,” that sisterly love and maidenly charity best diffuse their native sweetness. These are sensitive flowers – too bright and sweet indeed – as our language has just partly implied – to be fully typified by that pale plant of which it is said that

“Radiance and odor are not its dower,”

but resembling it in the essential character from which it takes its name. The modesty and sensibility which in a greater or less degree belong to other flowers as attributes, are in this, its essential nature, inwrought through every fibre of its delicate texture. The same qualities mark the maidenly virtues among the pure throng of womanly graces. These they enhance; of those, they are the distinctive nature. May it never become less exquisitely distinctive.

We do not therefore counsel our gentle young friends to nourish a spirit of enterprise, nor of necessity, even to enlarge the plain and natural circle of their duties. But in every sphere of woman – wherever her low voice thrills with the characteristic vibrations which are softer and sweeter than all the other sweet notes in nature’s infinite chorus, maidens have a mission to fulfil as serious and as honorable as those of a wife’s devotion, or a mother’s care – a mission of wider and more various range. We need not describe it.

Our story will not have been in vain, if it has done anything towards raising the single women of our country to the comparatively honorable level they occupy in England – anything to drive away the smile already fading from the lips of all but the vulgar, at the name of “old maid.”

“I speak by permission and not of commandment … Every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide.”

C. M. S.

New York, May 12th, 1857

Chapter 1

Wooing, Wedding,

and Repenting.

Two sisters were sitting, one evening, in their small private library, adjoining their sleeping apartment, in their stepmother’s house, in a fashionable quarter of New York. It matters not in what year, for though this their history makes great pretension to veritableness, it pays no respect whatever to chronology. The youngest – the youngest of course takes precedence in our society – was not past eighteen, and, grown to her full stature, rather above the average height; Grace Herbert differing in most of the faculties, qualities, and circumstances of her being from the average of her sex. To a strictly classical eye she was too thin for her height, but of such exact proportions, so flexible and graceful, that the defect was insignificant. Her features were of the noble cast. Her complexion was neither fair nor brown, but exquisitely smooth and soft. Ordinarily she was pale, and her large dark eyes lacked lustre; but a flash from her mind, a gust of passion, or even a gentle throb of affection, would brighten her cheek, light her eye, play over her lips, and even seem to radiate from the waving tresses of her dark hair. In that there was a notable peculiarity. It was dark, and yet so brilliant in certain lights, that in her little court of schoolgirl friends, where she was queen (by divine right), it was a standing dispute whether its color were golden, auburn, or brown. But it was not form or color that so much distinguished Grace Herbert, as a certain magnanimity in the expression of her face, figure, and movement.

Her sister Eleanor was some three years older, and many years wiser, in the opinion of their friends, in Grace’s, in all the world’s, save Eleanor’s herself. She was of the medium stature, a little too full, perhaps, for our fashion’s spare ideal, but not for perfect health and loveliness. Her complexion was of the firmest texture. Not blonde that might intimate change and early decay, but fair and blooming as Hebe’s. Her mouth – that cannot be described by lines and colors; her uncle Walter said to her that very evening, when she gave him her good night kiss, “Take care, dear Nelly, that the bees don’t light on your lips for their honey!” Eleanor’s eye was hazel, not brilliant, nor marked in form or setting; and yet such an eye, so steady, so clear, could only look out from serene memories, from religious aims, moderate expectations, and attainable hopes; from a heart of gentle and healthy affections. And there was such a holy calm on her brow, that, if the rest of her face had been veiled, one might have divined its whole expression. A divine seal was set there, with the inscription, “Though thou pass through the waters, they shall not overwhelm thee, and through the fires, they shall not consume thee.”

She was sitting on a cushion beside an open, time-stained morocco trunk, heavy with brass bands, and nails, and filled with files of old letters, while Grace sat by a table with a book of Flaxman’s outlines before her, and sheets of drawing paper, some bearing fair copies of her exquisite models, and others from her own ideals, scarcely less graceful.

Is there anything sadder than files of old family letters, where one seems to spell backward one’s own future! The frail fabric of paper is still firm, while the strong hand that poured over it the heart’s throbs of love, of hate, of hope or of despair, is mouldering in the grave. Letters filled with anxieties, blessed perhaps in their realization; hopes defeated in their very accomplishment, letters soiled with professions of everlasting affection that exhaled with a few mornings’ dews, and stamped with sincere loves, that seem, as the time-stained sheet trembles in the hand, to breathe from heaven upon it; letters with announcements of births, to be received with a family – all hail! – and then with fond records of opening childhood – and then – the black-lined sheet, and the hastily-broken seal, and the story of sickness and death; letters with gay disclosures of betrothals, of illimitable hopes, and sweet reliance; and a little further down in the file, conjugal dissatisfactions, bickerings, and disappointments, and perchance the history, from year to year, of a happy married love, tried and made stronger by trial, cemented by every joy, brightened all along its course with cheerfulness and patience, and home loves, and charities; but in this there is solemnity, for it is past. The sheaves are gathered into the garner, and on earth is nothing left but the seared stubble-field!

“Eleanor,” exclaimed Grace, looking up from her drawing, “what are you doing with that hecatomb of letters?”

“I have selected them to burn; they are only grandmamma’s, and her friends’, and Aunt Annie’s, and Uncle Tom’s.”

“All that is left of their profitable lives!” said Grace, with a mournful shake of her head.

“They had interest in their time, as our’s have, Grace. We spent all yesterday morning in matching our new silks with trimmings, and half the day before, in ordering our new hats; we cannot blame grandmamma if she did the same thing fifty years ago.”

“No – no – but is it not a bitter satire on life, as we live it? Hand me half a dozen of the letters, just as they come; let me see the stuff they are made of. Ah! this is Uncle Tom’s!” She ran her eye over the letter, reading aloud a paragraph here and there.

Dear Sam:

I should have written you as I promised, if I had found anything to write, but the town has been deuced dull. Now it’s waking up; there is a splendid little actress here – one Mrs Darley; our set patronize her. (‘Patronize – audacity!’ exclaimed Grace.) Fanny Dawson has come home – a splendid beauty! I and she rode out to Love Lane before breakfast yesterday; my new horse is fine under the saddle – Fanny is finer, but I shan’t try my harness there; I am shy of reins; one can’t tell who will hold them, so Miss Fanny will be left for my elder – if not my better –

“O! did our shallow-pated uncle,” again interrupted Grace, “presume to entertain the idea that he could marry a woman Uncle Walter would marry! What coxcombs men are!”

“Miss Fanny Dawson, I imagine,” said Eleanor, “was not so far above Uncle Tom, as she was below Uncle Walter!”

“What woman, Eleanor, ever did reach the stature of Uncle Walter’s great heart?”

Eleanor smiled fondly on her sister, as if she were thinking that sister might attain it, and proceeded with the edifying letter.

The coat you ordered me for Bill’s wedding came in the nick of time. The bride observed the fit and said she could tell a London made coat at a glance: she is cool, the widow that was. The old bishop married them; he was behind time; when he did come, I was sent up stairs to announce him to the expecting couple. Bill was striding up and down the room, looking all colors, mostly blue; and what think you, Sam, the brisk little widow was about? darning a silk stocking! – ’pon honor, Sam; and as she put it aside, she said, ‘darning was the best of sedatives.’

“O! our precious stepmother!” exclaimed Grace; “divine in her unchangeableness.”

“Grace! Grace!” said Eleanor, in a half smiling, half rebuking tone.

“It is well enough,” continued the letter,

for Bill to put his head in the noose again: he has children, and they must be taken care of; but I shall keep myself free of these shackles. If a man don’t make a slump as to the woman, there are children to bring up, and be provided for, and it don’t pay.

“The unmanly wretch – read no more, Eleanor.”

“There is little more to read; there is a long hiatus, and then this postscript:”

My letter has lain by a month, and now I have news. Smith, Jones and Co. have gone bankrupt, and poor Bill is on their paper well-nigh to the amount of his fortune; Luckily there’s something left, and then there’s the little widow’s fortune. Well, I go for the children of this world, that are wise in their generation. Commend me to the Londoners in general.

Believe me, as ever,

yours faithfully,

Tom Herbert

“Is it in that fashion, Mr Tom Herbert speaks of my father’s losses?” said Grace. “Hand me another, haphazard, Eleanor.”

She took a letter from Eleanor, and looking at the signature, read “Arabella Simpson.”

“O! that frightful, deaf old Mrs Clary, that grandmamma used to wonder we did not find beautiful, and tell us she was such a belle in her time! Let us see what she says.”

My Sweetest Annie:

You may conceive, but I cannot describe, how wretched I feel at our separation. You would hear from me much oftener if I followed the dictates of my heart, but my time is so absorbed that it is quite impossible to find a moment for my truest, darlingest, little friend. I write now to entreat you to match the feathers I send; aren’t they loves? I have spent two days in attempting to do it here. New York is a paradise for shops, you know; in this horrid Quaker city there’s no variety; at the same time, dearest love, will you look for a sash, the shade of the feathers? You may send me a sample, or you may send me several, if you feel uncertain about the match. It is really trying, the difficulty of matching. I sometimes walk up and down the streets of Philadelphia, hours and hours, to match a lace or a fringe, and so does my mamma. The Grays wear pink bonnets this winter. Mrs Remson has come out in her old yellow brocade again – the third winter, mamma says – just think of it! Do they hold on to powder yet in New York? I dread its going out – ’tis so becoming; It makes me quite wretched that you don’t come on this winter, dear little pearl! My hair was superbly dressed at Mrs Lee’s ball; I paid dear for it, though, for Pardessus was engaged ten hours ahead, so I had mine done at three A.M. Of course I didn’t feel over well the next day, and General Washington observed it, and said he did not like to see young ladies look pale. As it was the only time he ever spoke to me, he might have found something more pleasing to say; pale or not, I found partners for every dance, and refused nine! But, darling, I must cut short my epistle, and sign myself,

your sincere and ever attached friend,

Arabella

P.S. O! please send on my ‘Pious Thoughts for Every Day in the Year;’ mamma never likes me to be without that book, and I could have committed ever so much that morning I got up with my hair.”

Grace threw down the letter without comment, and took up another.

“This is from poor Aunt Betty, grandmamma’s sister, was she not Eleanor? You keep all these musty family genealogies.”

“I lived so much at my grandfather’s, I could not forget them.”

“And I remember nothing of those people, except that they tired me to death – shadows they were, except grandpapa, and Aunt Sarah: they were ’live people. But let me see what poor Aunt Betty says out of her shroud!”

My Ever Dear Sister:

Having a few leisure moments, I sit down to have a little pleasant chat with you. I have still to acknowledge your letter, informing me of the decease of our dear old friend, Lady Hepsy; strange coincidence! that she should have been burned to death, so afraid of fire as she was all her life; but so it is – ‘Our days a transient period run!’

I was truly grieved to hear of Walter’s losses, one after another – three promising immortal souls all gone! Well, one can never tell where death will aim his shafts next. But we must not murmur against Providence. I am sure if anyone ever performed her responsible duties, it was Walter’s wife. I approved her so much when I was on my last visit to you. The children were never exposed to the air, and so provided against chills and draughts, and always taking preventive medicines.”

“Eleanor, was Uncle Walter’s wife a fool?” asked Grace.

“I knew little about her,” replied Eleanor, “but I gathered from Aunt Sarah that she was a beauty before marriage, and a valetudinarian ever after.”

“And Uncle Walter yielded to her folly? What a compound of strength and weakness Uncle Walter is!”

Eleanor proceeded with Aunt Betty’s letter:

You will feel for me, dear sister, when I tell you the measles are all over our street. You may be sure I keep the children shut up. Two of them were terribly ill last night, and I sent for Dr. Lee. I was all of a nerve when he came, expecting he would tell me they had the symptoms, but to my inexpressible relief he said it was only the cranberry sauce and mince-pie, and almonds, and raisins, and so on, they had eaten plentifully of at dinner – poor little things! how much they have to suffer in this world!”

If you have any of Lowe’s croup conserve on hand, pray send some to me; I like to be provided. My husband will have his way with the boys, so he takes them out in all weathers, ‘roughing it,’ as he calls it. To be sure they are hearty now, but when sickness comes, it will be sickness!

“Hoping that you and yours may enjoy as much health as is consistent, I remain, my dear sister,

“Yours faithfully,

Elizabeth Wimple

P.S. My love to Sally Jenkins. I am sorry her old complaint has returned; I knew it would; ask her to try Deitz’s Essential Elixir.

P.S. 2nd. Please, dear sister, send me your recipe for scarlet fever, in case it prevails.

“Poor Aunt Betty!” exclaimed Grace, when the letter was finished, “and this is what she called a pleasant chat. Why, she is a fair pendant for the old woman Uncle Walter was chuckling over, who found it so hard to part with the old comrade she had enjoyed so much sickness and so many deaths with! If this is life, it were better to die now on its threshold, than to go further. Never tell, Eleanor,” she added with a smile half sad and half ironical, “but do you really believe that such creatures as these of our departed family, whose minds were expended on dinners, and clubs, belles, horses, laces, and feathers, measles, and conserves, do you sincerely believe their souls survive their bodies? No, no! they perish with the things that perish. You are too much shocked to answer me, Eleanor,” she continued, looking up from the pencil she had resumed. “But, what now? you have found something of real interest; how I like to see tears on your cheek; you are the only person I ever saw look pretty in tears. Your tears are like raindrops in sunshine! but what is it?”

“I have found a file of Aunt Sarah’s letters,” she replied, “comprising thirty years of her life. See how time-stained they are, Grace, and yet there is an immortal freshness in them. Dear Aunt Sarah, how she loved us all! How I loved her!”

“Yes – and I had a sort of indefinite wonder that you did so – that you liked to be with her – there was something so dread and shadowy about her; but now, that I know so much more of life – Grace was scarce eighteen! – I see how it was. To your sweet nature it was the pleasure of cheering – the little divinity loved the statue it shone upon. But read me something out of her letters. I remember a certain grandeur about her, a grand silence. I wonder if she says anything of Uncle Walter?”

“This letter announces her engagement to Frank Silborn.”

“O! read that – that must be interesting.”

Eleanor read –

Dearest Cousin Emma:

This day I am seventeen! and this day I am the happiest creature in the universe. You will guess why, and how, for you prophesied long ago that what has now happened would come to pass. Perhaps your prophecy has led to its fulfillment – certainly hastened it, that I will allow; for since we were at Madame B.’s school, and you talked so much of him, he has been the ideal of my life – everything that I have imagined of noble and beautiful has been impersonated in Frank Silborn. O think of my felicity! He is mine, I am his; as the clock struck twelve last night we plighted vows, and exchanged rings! O what a bliss is life before me! And yet now I think I would be content to die, my spirit is so raised with a sense of joy ineffable. I cannot believe it is but three weeks since Frank’s return; my love for him seems to stretch through my whole being.

It is two – no, three years since we met at the fête on board the Henri Quatre, the eve of his departure for France. It was love at first sight. From that time he has shaped my visions by day, my dreams by night. I could not tell this to papa, when he shook his head, and said, ‘I do not quite like this haste, Sarah;’ but he smiled consent, while he sighed and kissed me. I think old people always sigh when they hear of an engagement. Mamma did not, though. ‘The first family in New York!’ she said, ‘and such a pretty fortune!’ Poor mamma! she has not quite my father’s single eye.

Walter has just been in to congratulate me. One can never tell whether Walter is in jest or earnest. ‘Have a care, Sarah,’ he said, ‘hot love is soon cold.’ Ours will never be; I am sure its present heat melts away all fear of change. Frank sends for me – so adieu till we meet.

Yours ever,

S. H.

“Good heaven! is it possible?” exclaimed Grace. “O, Eleanor, how can one ever guess what is to come. I will never marry – but, go on – go on, what comes next?”

“The next letter bears date two years later. Miss Emma has just left Aunt Sarah. It is filled with details about the baby, who now fills her field of vision. You won’t care to hear it, Grace.”

“No; but is there nothing about that ‘ideal’ of her’s – poor Aunt Sarah!”

“Yes, just at the close she says:” ‘Frank and I have had unkind words. I am so grieved, Emma; I would that mine had never been spoken.’”

“Look at the next letter. I want to know how that little speck overcast her whole firmament, from horizon to zenith.”

Eleanor unfolded five or six letters – glanced over them, and shook her head. “Those,” she said, “cover twelve months. They are all about the baby’s progress – some pensive sentences, but no word of her husband. Ah! here is something,” opening another; “this is four years after marriage:”

It has come, Emma. Frank and I have had a serious quarrel. He was disrespectful to my father – he spoke abusively of him to me. I could not stand that. My father had urged his going into business; he remonstrated with him upon the danger of an idle life – But my baby is crying for me, and I must go, and cry with it.

“Ah, it is all over,” said Grace, “she is disenchanted. The ideal is changed to the real. Pray read on, Eleanor.”

Eleanor read the next letter in the file, still two years later:

You reproach me with my silence, dear Emma; but why should I write? The childhood of my children glides on evenly. I have nothing to tell of it. You know they are a comfort – more – more – an infinite joy to me. And of my husband I never speak. You know from what a wild, senseless dream I awoke, to find my husband was not the man I married, but idle, coarse, sensual, ill-tempered, a gambler, and a spendthrift. There are sorrows to which human sympathy is as inapplicable as it is unavailing. I must bide my destiny – there is no compromise in a bankrupt marriage! If he, who, ignorant of his pilot, goes to sea in a ship, unseaworthy and without ballast, deserves the wreck he meets, surely those who enter into the most sacred, complicated, and hazardous relation of life rashly, deserve the chastisement they provoke. Alas! Emma, sorrow has made me early wise! I see that my dear father shares the sorrow with me, as he does the blame. He should have delayed the marriage – corrected my youth by his age. O! how white his head has become in the last two years, while my heart has grown wrinkled and gray!

There come my blessed little ones from their walk. Their voices are to my troubled soul far more potent than David’s harp to Saul’s!

Eleanor looked at the date of the next letter, one year later, and read on:

I have been in tribulation, dear Emma, for the last few weeks. I begin to feel it intolerable to live under the same roof with my husband. I had sedulously concealed his irregularities. Last week I told the whole story to my father. I begged of him to effect an amicable separation, but my husband would listen to no terms, and will never give the children to me, but by the compulsion of the law; and the result at law is uncertain, for my father says the law has neither justice nor mercy for a woman. I cannot go through the mire of a public trial. I will not expose my children to the after misery of knowing their father’s infamy. I will never leave them – I would rather lie down at the threshold of their door, and have my life trodden out. But do not grieve too much for me, dear Emma. While they, my darlings, live, I have life, and hope, and, God be praised, much joy.

“Poor Aunt Sarah!” said Eleanor, wiping the blinding tears from her eyes. “The next letter,” she said, “is in a different hand. Bless me, it is grandpapa’s! I know – yes, I supposed it was just about this time it happened. How it’s blotted! – how the hand faltered! Dear old grandpapa!”

Dearest Emma:

It is my sad duty to write to you the most sorrowful news – prepare yourself, my child, for it will greatly shock you. Yesterday afternoon – I can scarcely guide my pen – Silborn drove up to his door in a curricle, and insisted on taking the two little boys, who were just dressed for a walk, to ride. Sarah must have seen he was greatly excited – in no state to drive – for the nurse says ‘she refused decidedly to let the children go;’ whereupon he snatched them both, and ran out of the house with them to the carriage. He drove furiously up the street, turned the corner short, ran afoul a loaded wagon, turned over the carriage – the boys, our dear little boys, were thrown against a curbstone and killed, instantly – both Sarah’s little boys – both, Emma – both!

For God’s sake come down as soon as possible. Sarah sits over her children with her hands clasped, without saying one word, or dropping one tear. God knows what will be the end.

Eleanor dropped the letter, and both girls wept, as if they had never heard the tragedy before. They knew it as one of the family traditions, and had received it, after time had seared over the wounds. Such wounds are never healed. They knew, too, what no letter recorded, that their aunt was torn from the children to be carried to an insane asylum, where she remained two years; and they were not surprised to find the next letter of five years’ later date:

Dear Emma:

I promised, when we parted, to resume our long-suspended correspondence. With what varied emotions of remorse and gratitude I survey this chasm. O! Emma, how differently life looks, prospectively or retrospectively. After it pleased God to restore my reason, I wasted years of responsible life in helpless misery, and profitless repining.

I tormented myself with vain and endless efforts to solve the mysteries of life – the mysteries of my life! Were my calamities retributions? Was it a God of love and mercy who thus visited the rashness, ignorance, presumptuousness of a girl of seventeen? The vengeance of the heathen deities seemed not more cruel to me than his who had permitted my children to be dashed against a stone. No light entered my soul; but, as when with a diseased eye you look at the sun, a black image falls wherever you direct your eye – so I saw nothing in life but struggle, misery, blasting. I ceased to resist the conviction of universal, unmitigated evil. I was paralyzed by despair. I was truly the skeleton in my father’s house – an image of woe that turned all the cheerful uses of life to sadness. His friends urged him to send me back to the asylum. My poor mother was worn out with me, and kept up a continual simmering of vexation. This was no more to me than the complaining of a kitten in a tempest. Thus I went on till it seemed as if there was not a spark of love left in my soul to be kindled by God’s mercies. But love is the immortal spark, and however overlaid and obstructed, a divine breath restores its energy, and it consumes in its pure and holy flame all evil, and revitalizes our whole being. While there seemed neither light nor heat in me, my soul was touched by a sense of my father’s sweet patience with me. He not only never spoke a rebuke or remonstrance, but whenever he spoke to me his voice was mellowed with compassion, and often I met his eye moistened with an infinite tenderness. One day I had returned in a state of mind more than usually irritated with Providence, and abhorrent of life, from a habitation of wretchedness, for my conscience scourged me now and then to acts of charity, and I was sitting before the fire, my arms folded, and my veil down, my soul in an attitude of defiant despair, when my father came in – gently removed my veil, kissed me, and pressed my cheek to his. Suddenly, like a ray of light, those words darted athwart my mind, ‘If your earthly father so love you, how much more your heavenly Father?’ I threw my arms around my father and wept on his bosom – for the first time since my children were brought home dead to me, I felt the relief of tears. I rushed to my room – I fell on my knees – I uttered no word of confession or prayer. My mind was opened, and light entered. The Bible which I had pored over and felt as if it were all words – words – words – was now bright with divine effulgence. I read it with my mind’s eye, as well as with my bodily organs. I saw how the holy men of old held fast their faith through all trial and tribulation. I received Job’s sublime words, ‘though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,’ thus accepting God’s mysterious dealings with him, and repelling the abortive metaphysical arguments of his earthly comforters – poor groundlings! Passage after passage from David’s lips dropped into my melted heart. The prophets seemed to bear me over the dark ocean of life with their strong wings, and, dear Emma, I laid myself down at the feet of Jesus, and became as a little child, receiving without questioning or doubt the teaching of his words and life. I was possessed with a peace which I cannot describe to you. No matter now how profound the mysteries of life. They were sealed up – I knelt upon them and looked up with the eye of faith. The exultation of my mind of course subsided, but the religious trust and peace remains. It is not what we find life, but what it makes of us, that is the great question we are to solve. I came out of my tribulation with my heart overflowing with gratitude. Duty did not appear to me a stern teacher; for him who trusts and believes, she has a smiling aspect and carries in her hand a cornucopia of blessings. I no longer weary my mind and burden my heart with an attempt to solve the mysteries of life. God is good. He loveth us as a father loveth his children. He has sent his beloved Son to reiterate the great truths revealed by nature, and providence; and though it be evident, my dear Emma, that happiness is not our normal state, yet we have occasional joys, bright passages enough to give us a conviction of the capacity of our nature, and to confirm the hope of its future destiny.

Such joy is mine, late gleaner as I am in God’s field, when I am permitted to do some unexpected good. Such joy was mine yesterday, when I stood at the font, sponsor for my brother John’s little girl Eleanor, and consecrated to her a portion of all that remains of my health and strength, so long abused and wasted by a sinful excess of grief.

As Eleanor silently folded this letter, Grace, after looking steadfastly in her sister’s face, said, “Now one riddle is solved for me, Eleanor, and I know why it is that you are of the celestial, and I of the terrestrial: your childhood was passed with this heavenly aunt of ours, while I, left to earthly influences, as you know, though you may never have the bad boldness to say so, have made wings for myself, which I know will melt off in the first fiery trial, and leave me to sink, poor mortal as I am! But how sorry I am I did not comprehend our heavenly-minded aunt.”

“And I think, Grace, I loved her without comprehending her. Every day interprets to me her earnest life and teaching; it will be a great reproach to me if I am not the better for it. Will you have any more of the letters, or are you tired? Here is a very old one, that seems to be all about Uncle Walter.”

“Uncle Walter! there’s music in his name. Yes, read it. I hope it is about his marriage; that part of his life seems as much lost out of it, as the lost tribes of the Jews to their brethren.”

“Yes, it is of his marriage. The letter begins:”

Dear Emma:

The rumor you heard (and heard before we did, so complete is our retirement from the world) is confirmed. Walter announced his engagement, in his own way, last evening. ‘Do you know,’ he asked my mother, ‘whom Augustus Dawson married?’

‘I have heard,’ replied my poor mother, with a certain compression of her lips, which in spite of me always reminds me of the ‘Honorable Mr Delville.’ ‘I dare say she was a Brown, or a Smith – I never remember such names. She was nobody.’ ‘I am sorry for that,’ replied Walter, ‘for I propose to make his daughter, Miss Dawson, somebody, by giving her your name – with your approbation, and my father’s.’

‘Not with mine, Walter – never – I remember now, Dawson married a Winal; I never could bring myself to consent to your marrying a granddaughter of Dicky Winal.’

‘Vinal, if you please, madam. (Poor mamma always transposes her V’s and W’s, though Walter never lets slip a chance of correcting her.) You do recall the name?’ ‘Yes, it came like a blow. Dicky Winal was a tallow chandler – all our family bought candles of him.’ ‘And “our family,” my dear mother, being addicted to lighting their candles at both ends, Mr Richard Vinal died richer than any of the “Sir Harry’s” or “Sir John’s,” to whom, as I have learned from you, we have the honor of being distantly related.’

‘Well, well, Walter, if we are not rich as they, we are not poor enough to want any of their greasy money.’

‘No, madam, that article always retains enough of its slippery quality to glide away from our hands.’ While Walter talked with this levity to my mother, his eyes glanced to my father, who at the first word he had spoken had thrown down his newspaper, and risen from his chair, and leaning his elbow on the mantel, had fixed his sweet radiant eye anxiously on Walter. ‘You were trifling, my son,’ he said: ‘it is all badinage.’

‘No, pardon me, my dear father, I am in earnest. But as my Fanny is not the granddaughter of the tallow chandler, but is a daughter of Mr Dawson’s first wife, and granddaughter of William Delancy, my mother’s friend in those happy days when we were King George’s subjects, I hope –’

‘Hope! yes, indeed, that you may – I might have known you were fooling, Walter. Dicky Winal, indeed!’

‘Vinal, madam.’

‘What does it signify what you call such trumpery? Why I might have known. Nanny Jones told me at Christmas that Dawson had brought his wife’s daughter from England. How lucky she has been living with English gentry! Of course she will have nothing to do with the second brood – Winal’s grand-children.’

‘Vinal’s, my dear mother.’

‘Yes – dear me, Walter! yes, Winal’s. But Fanny will inherit equally with them?’

‘Probably not. She will have nothing in common with the second brood, you know, dear mother. Dawson is a just man, and will so far respect the rights of his children as to transmit to them the fortune produced by the candles. No. My Fanny’s crest is that which fits most of our Tory gentry – an empty purse. You say nothing, my dear father. May I bring her here tomorrow for your blessing?’

‘Certainly, Walter. I trust you have duly considered this matter. We have already suffered from haste. (I caught the words, though he depressed his voice.) This is the great event of your life, my son. Every other takes color from it. You are not a boy to be governed by impulses – by love at first sight.’

‘I am not, and this is not my first love,’ he said, with such a tone and emphasis that we all started and turned our eyes to him. He started too, as if self-betrayed, and then coming up to me he pressed me to his bosom with a tenderness the more affecting that he is undemonstrative; ‘you need not speak, my dear sister,’ he said, ‘these cold little hands say too much.’ I tried to speak cheerily, but could not. I feel like a thing of ill omen in all times of gladness.

Walter settled it with my father that he would bring his Fanny to us the next morning at twelve. Twelve o’clock came, and one, and not Walter. My father was annoyed – nothing vexes him more than a failure of punctuality, but he suppressed his impatience, and, in the kindness of his gentle heart, seeking an apology for Miss Fanny, he said, ‘hours are later in England than with us.’

‘Yes,’ said my mother, who never loses an occasion of lauding anything English, ‘and their customs are so much better than ours, that I wish we could introduce them all here.’

‘That would be about as sensible,’ replied my father, ‘as to dress a boy in his grandfather’s clothes – but here they are!’ and Miss Fanny entered, in very elegant walking costume, leaning on Walter’s arm. She came in as she would have entered any other drawing room on any other occasion – neither bold, nor timid. My father would have taken her in his dear old arms, but she prevented this by gracefully turning her cheek for a salutation. I knew the current of paternal feeling suffered a sudden congelation. Just then, a knot of ribbon attached to Miss Dawson’s ruff dropped. She took it from Walter’s hand, adjusted it, and afterwards, with a sort of conventional smile, received my mother’s and my kiss.

Perhaps I give significance to mere trifles: Walter seemed satisfied – delighted even; and my brother Walter is a keen observer of the foibles of our sex. He has been too fond of quoting from Pope, and the writers of his day, the biting satires upon the mass of women who have ‘no characters at all.’

While mamma was calling up all the dead Delancys from her memory, many more than Fanny Dawson had ever heard of, my father sat perusing the young lady with his soft eye (not a very intricate reading, Emma!) and I sat silent, my eyes steadfast on my work. Of late years, whenever I feel emotion, a kind of numbness comes over my organs – life and heat seem concentrated at my heart. My friends know I am not the petrefaction I seem. How others judge me, it does not matter. Walter was disturbed at the impression I was making on Miss Dawson. ‘Have you made a vow to finish that blanket for Nelly while we sit here, Mrs Silborn?’ he asked. I looked up from my embroidery, stammering an apology. ‘Mrs Silborn! dear me!’ exclaimed Miss Fanny. ‘Why, Mr Herbert, you did not tell me your sister was married! I am enchanted – do you know I detest old maids – don’t you Mrs Herbert?’

‘Yes, my dear, they are so inconvenient.’

‘Just what mamma says! – one never knows where to put them, and there are so many in England! Dear Mrs Silborn, I am sure I shall love you – and we shall be such friends, both married ladies – what a sweet blanket you are embroidering! I will come again tomorrow to see your baby – I am so fond of babies! Is Mr Silborn absent?’ She had turned the creaking hinges to sorrows never alluded to in my family. Do not imagine I burst into tears. We were all silent, even my mother, and the young lady becoming conscious there were broken chords in the instrument she had so rudely handled, reminded Walter of an engagement, and after again surveying herself in the glass and seeing that all was right, she made a graceful exit.

‘She is a very pretty young lady,’ said my father, as the door closed after them – ‘very, very,’ as if by reiteration he could satisfy his desire that she were something more. My mother took up the words heartily – ‘pretty, beautiful! my dear; so high-bred too, such aristocratic features! I should know her for a Delancy anywhere, so English! I am glad she has escaped their embonpoint.’

“‘Don’t use French words, my dear,’ said my father, testily, for him; ‘you don’t speak French well.’

“‘French!’ exclaimed mamma; ‘I am sure that’s English; I have heard it a thousand times in English.’ (Poor mamma.)

‘Ah well, my love,’ said my father, reverting to his usual equanimity, ‘it is not your word, but your sentiment I quarrel with. Embonpoint is the sign of health, and you and I have lived long enough to know that health is the foundation of energy, contentment, cheerfulness, and of whatever makes life either useful or pleasant. You, my dear, are a pattern of the embonpoint.’ And thus the scene was rounded off with this little conjugal compliment.

O, Emma, is this Fanny Dawson Walter’s ideal? – my rational, strong-minded brother! ‘We know what we are, but we know not what we shall be!’ Is all love a mere enchantment? and did Shakespeare mean so to symbolize it in his ‘Midsummer’s Night’s Dream?’

I have heard men – sensible, philosophic men – explain the hideous disparities in marriage, by quietly receiving it as an ordination of Providence that it should be so – in order that, by an amalgamation of the tall and the short, the fat and the lean, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad, an average might be sustained. I do not believe a word of it. I have more reverent notions of God’s providence. I believe that God instituted marriage, to produce in that relation, as in all others, the highest happiness and the purest virtue, and that the fearful disorders and imperfections of the condition are not of his ordination, but produced by the passions, the prejudices, the ignorance, and weakness of men and women. Ambition, greed, govern; an accident, an overpowering vanity, a whim, a fancy, sets the seal on life! When men buy houses or lands they take counsel; when they buy a horse, or add a cow to their herd, they ask a friend’s advice; but in the great affair of life, that which makes the life of life, they seek no oracle.

I rather think that a want of true respect for women lies at the root of the mistake Walter is making, and of many marriage wrecks, as far as men are concerned; and with us – poor women – dear Emma, we suck in with our mother’s milk love-fancies, to be distilled upon the first man that crosses our path, and makes love to us after we are sixteen; and till then and always, we are taught by books, by all the talk we hear from old and young, married and single, that marriage is not only the felicity of woman, but that her dignity, her attractiveness, her usefulness depends on it; that in short it is a sine quâ non – the choice of the alternative is never to be thought of. The sphinx in the desert has not a more dreary, hideous solitude to the imagination of a girl, than the old maid, who must pass through the world without the whispers of love, or any of the rich appliances of married life. So that marriage becomes not only their heaven, but an escape from – the word is not for ‘ears polite,’ dear Emma; and women go to the altar, and vow love, honor, and obedience, and priests require this vow, of impossible performance by the mere volition of the maker. ‘Obey’ we may the sternest, most unreasonable commands; but the love and honor depend upon the partner in this portentous partnership. There is no anguish, Emma – I speak from experience – I am sure there can be none in any state of penal misery, to surpass that inflicted by severe disparities in married life; and, with my own still open wounds, I say sincerely that I believe there is no felicity exceeding that of happy married love. You cannot wonder that the marriage of anyone I love fills me with dread. I cannot help it. Memory has killed hope. I remember how I rushed into the paradise of my imagination. How soon the flowers were blighted, and trailing in the dust! How soon the fruit was blasted!

I cannot account for this fancy – it is not love – of Walter’s betraying him to such serious consequences. A man, like my brother, to be caught by the sparkle of this little brilliant! Does that first love, that he so inadvertently confessed, explain it? He has seemed singularly indifferent to the attractions of women ever since he left college. Perhaps he has been disappointed in some fervent, earnest, youthful passion, and then, as men do, when the time comes to choose between the married man and the sorry bachelor, he has suffered himself to be the sport and the victim of an accident. He should have sought a woman who would be the friend of his maturity, who could sound the depth of his affections, give impulse to his highest aspirations, be his counselor in perplexity, and then stand behind him with the gentleness and self-renunciation of a loving wife. Instead of this, Emma – but I do not know Fanny Dawson. She may prove something very different from the pretty shallowness she seems. God grant she may sustain that love which is the element of life, from turret to foundation stone, and heaven pardon my foreboding, that Walter’s structure will fall at the first strain.

My brother’s is a most noble nature, Emma, but he is indolent, and lets times and accidents master him. Dear Walter, I tremble for you when you come to want the companionship of a friend, the buoyancy and infinite ingenuity of a true woman’s love – when children come to be trained for earth and heaven – when the saddest exigences of life arrive, or, what is perhaps more dangerous to happiness, when its familiar prosperities become stale and ennuyantes; then – but, dear brother, I will not be your Cassandra!

It is because I reverence the marriage compact that I would not have it lightly made. God knows how I reverence it; how it bound my conscience to every possible sacrifice; how, in obedience to it, I turned all my means from the natural channels of my affections, to feed and clothe my miserable husband, and to answer his insatiable demands. I was with him, Emma, for many hours of every day during the last months of his loathsome life, in the wretched lodging to which, in spite of my supplies, he had reduced himself. Neither my words nor my prayers penetrated the obstructions of his dimmed senses and clouded mind. I could not comfort him; but I appeased my conscience, which forever reiterated to me my rash marriage vows.

Eleanor kissed the letter, and reverently refolding it, returned it to the file.

Mrs Silborn’s letters had thoroughly awakened Grace’s interest. She left her drawings, and insensibly slid down on the cushion beside Eleanor. Another file of their aunt’s letters was taken out, and each sister eagerly opened and read them, passing their eyes over family events which they already well knew – such as their grandmother’s death, the particulars of their grandfather’s long decline, “the going down of that sun which,” as their aunt wrote, “had preserved a course of serene beneficence from its dawn to its setting,” etc., etc.

“How I wish,” said Grace, “that I could find something more about dear Uncle Walter. It is always just so, the moment people are married they are passed over with mere hints and allusions. Ah! here Aunt Sarah says:”

‘Walter’s wife is exceedingly admired. Walter brought her here to exhibit a rose colored Parisian dress, before going to General M.’s ball. Mamma was in raptures. “She does look lovely,” said my father, as they left the room, and sighed. I sighed, too, Emma.’

“Here again:”

‘Fanny says she has worn all her dresses twice, and she shall go out no more. “What should I go for,” she says, “when I have no more new dresses? it’s so tiresome! No one cares for a married woman.”’

“Ah!” cried Eleanor, “here is something better:”

‘Fanny is becoming a devoted mother; every faculty of her nature seems resolved into the maternal instinct. I don’t think Walter quite likes being so soon superseded.’

Letter after letter was explored, but no mention of Mrs Herbert for three years.

“Of course she has become a nonentity,” said Grace.

“No, Grace,” said Eleanor, “here, in a letter, of four years later date, Aunt Sarah says:”

‘You inquire about Walter’s boys. I am sorry to say they are puny little things, petted and pampered by their weak mother, seldom allowed to breathe fresh air, and in the doctor’s hands six days out of seven. Is it not strange that Walter, with his sense, should submit to this? Poor fellow, he takes refuge from the inanities of his home at “the club,” and thus he neither manfully cures, nor patiently endures, the evil.’

“I cannot find a mention of Aunt Fanny’s name again,” said Grace, running her eye over several letters.

“There was little to say,” replied Eleanor; “the poor little boys died, as I have heard from Aunt Sarah, before they were four years old, and Aunt Fanny, after a few years of invalidism – not life, nor quite death – followed them.”

“Oh, I remember her death!” exclaimed Grace, “and remember perfectly feeling a little ashamed of Uncle Walter that he did not cry; and saying to him – from my infancy I have spoken out my heart to him – ‘Why don’t you cry, Uncle Walter? Papa did dreadfully, when mamma died!’ I shall never forget his look and answer: ‘I am no dissembler, Gracie!’ I went straight to the library, and looked out the word in Johnson, and since then I have never spoken to him of Aunt Fanny. Eleanor,” she continued, after a few moments’ brooding, “these family annals reveal a cruel destiny – a fate hangs over us all. There was our great-hearted grandfather married to the tenth dilution of a woman; Aunt Sarah wedded to a sensual brute, and Uncle Walter to a fool!”

“But, Grace, it was of free will – not fate!”

“And you have no fears. I have. With the freest will in the world, I have a perfect terror of fate. But what are you smiling at, Eleanor? For pity’s sake, if anything has turned up in Aunt Sarah’s letters to smile at, let’s have it.”

“I have just lighted upon something that comes a little nearer home to you and to me.”

She read aloud:

My brother William was wise in allotting to Walter, in his will, a suit of apartments in his house. This secures to the girls Walter’s protection, and to him the infinite comfort of their companionship. Between him and Grace there is growing a strong affection, founded in congenial natures, with the authority and respect of the parental and filial tie, softened by the consciousness, on both sides, that the duties are voluntary. I do not admit the affection is stronger than that which subsists between Eleanor and myself, but there is ever a raciness imparted by difference of sex, and besides Grace will always keep the current of her loves more agitated and more sparkling than Eleanor.

Eleanor paused.

“Read on,” said Grace; and she proceeded.

My dear Emma, I look forward to this child’s future with painful anxiety –

“Of course she did; but go on, I can bear it.”

I can leave my little Ellen tranquilly, whatever may be her destiny in life. There is a principle of spiritual development in her that clouds will but nurture. Poor Grace is a tropical plant, capable of rich growth and marvelous beauty, but exposed to volcanic perils. She is so deeply stamped by nature, that neither time nor custom will wear out the impression. She is capable of soaring higher than my Eleanor, and will always be capable of feats, but never of dear Nelly’s patient continuance in well-doing. Grace has an intensity manifested in hot loves and hot hates. This is all innocent enough now – she is but eleven – but will it not impair the ripened woman? Eleanor will inherit the earth, which I take to mean the spiritual harvests that life yields, and which those only reap who have moderate expectations, disciplined tempers, unexacting affections, and subdued wills. Poor Grace will reach heaven at last, but through much tribulation.

“Stop, Ellen – stop!” cried Grace; “Aunt Sarah is dreadful. I can’t have her spin out the black thread of my destiny, and besides, I do not honestly think that our good aunt quite comprehended me.”

“Aunt Sarah died when you were but thirteen, Grace, and surely you have the best of it. She carries you to heaven, and leaves to me only the inheritance of the earth.”

“An inheritance, Eleanor, that is sure to take you through the beaten track of all the beatitudes up to the third heaven. But come, is there more? I believe, after all, Aunt Sarah was a seeress; let’s have it.”

“It’s all much in the same strain,” replied Ellen, about to refold the voluminous letter.

“Ah, I see how it is, Miss Eleanor; let me have it – it won’t try my modesty.”

Grace read aloud:

Eleanor has not her sister’s personal or mental brilliancy –

“a sop to Cerberus,” exclaimed Grace –

but she has that equal temperament that is not liable to disturbances. Her clear mind mirrors everything definitely, and in true proportions. Grace’s is the glassy lake, reflecting with intense brightness, but darkened by every cloud that flies over it, and tossed by gusty winds and giving back shifting shadows.’ Eleanor is trained in self-sacrifice –

“I am the trainer, no doubt” –

and her activity and industry – she is the busiest of little bees – will preserve her from the self-created miseries of the nervous, sickly women that afflict domestic life.

How tenacious are the affections, dear Emma. Mine, wrenched as they were, have taken root again in Eleanor. The maternal instincts have made a channel for themselves, as they will, for they are the ruling force of a woman’s nature. It is not necessary to have borne a child to love it with a mother’s perceptive, anxious, relying fondness. The affections are not dependent on the instincts, though they be best adapted to the conservation of the race, and its general happiness.

“Aunt Sarah is getting sententious, and prosy,” said Grace, “but proceed.”

To return to the children. They illustrated their different qualities in their reception of their stepmother. Eleanor was ten, Grace but seven when William married Mrs Carlton. My brother asked me to prepare the girls for this event. When I told them, Eleanor turned fearfully pale, put her arm clingingly around me, and laid her head on my shoulder. She did not speak. Grace went off into a passion of grief and indignation. ‘A new mother!’ she exclaimed; ‘Mrs Carlton dare not call herself my mother; my mother lives, though we cannot see her; you told me so yourself, Aunt Sarah. How dare papa? Mrs Carlton can’t be my mother. I wish she were dead!’ ‘O, don’t, Grace!’ interposed Eleanor. ‘Then, Eleanor, if that suits you better, I wish you and I were dead!’ And so she went on till she was exhausted, but neither convinced nor subdued; and to this day, I believe, a stepmother is to her an unmitigable evil –

“true! even to this day true, Aunt Sarah!” –

to which all my sister-in-law’s good sense and good temper has not reconciled her, so do her feelings overpower her reason. My wise, good little Eleanor admitted all I said of her father’s right to marry again, and of the requirements of her filial duty; and she went to it with the determination to live as she will wish to have lived when she comes to die.

“O Eleanor, how completely you have carried out the principles Aunt Sarah implanted! Your present gilds your future, and there is a glowing twilight in your past. Such prospective, retrospective goodness is marvelous to me! But what does Aunt Sarah say of that horrible slough of Mrs Herbert’s advent? – how well I remember it.”

The girls were sad enough when their stepmother came, but Ellen’s was a gentle inoffensive sadness, and involuntary clinging to sweet filial memories. Poor little Grace seemed resenting a personal indignity – an irreparable injury, and to this day, whatever Mrs Herbert proposes goes counter to her grain, while Eleanor, ‘ceasing to resist, ceased to suffer,’ and coöperating in the somewhat tedious perfection of Mrs Herbert’s domestic economy, the harmonies of her nature were not disturbed. Duty did the work of love. Poor Grace is in a state of perpetual annoyance, fretted by her stepmother’s foibles, and feeling the bitterness of being fretted by them, for she has a clear self-discernment. Fortunately, my sister-in-law has too serene a temper, and perhaps a little too much self-complacency, to perceive Grace’s irritations. She honestly thinks both the girls love her, and fancies that Grace with anyone else might be irascible, but that she knows how to manage her!

“O!” cried Grace, “I am the same child yet: her sweet brings out all my acid. I have traveled all the way from seven to eighteen without learning anything. I shall never be wiser.”

“Do not say so, dear Grace,” said Eleanor, interposing, as a kind-hearted person is too apt to, to fend off the arrows of conscience; “this very morning, at breakfast, I was admiring your self-command in making no retort when Mrs Herbert so elaborately lauded Horace Copley, contrasting him with his aristocratic manners, and elegant taste in dress, with Frank Esterly.”

“My dear, simple Eleanor, I was pleased with what she said. Mr Esterly piqued me last evening. He tossed over my finest drawings without saying one word about them. No, I am not deceived. I know myself. You deserved to be Aunt Sarah’s favorite. You were papa’s – mamma’s – you are mine, dear Eleanor,” she cried, her face irradiating, and throwing her arms around her sister; “I love you a thousand times better than I love myself.”

“You are more generous than just,” said Eleanor, returning her sister’s embrace. “It is not true – I am not the favorite of all our family. Uncle Walter loves you immeasurably more than he loves me.”

“That is true, I think. Yes, I admit that. Dear old Uncle Walter! We are a good deal alike – he and I. We hate monotony, even in goodness. He groans – if he does not groan aloud, as I do, under Mrs Herbert’s infinite tediousness. We are both sinners, and repenters. Poor dear Uncle Walter! I am afraid he is no more judicious in his loves than he was twenty years ago. Can’t you find any more scraps in the letters about him?”

“Yes, here is one:”

You say, dear Emma, that you were both surprised and glad to see Walter looking so well and bright after the loss of his little boys. You do not know Walter. He is like those citadels kept well manned and in stern outward order when there is starvation within. I should call my brother a Christian stoic, if there were anything in Christianity so hard and egotistic as stoicism. When his poor, pampered, doctored children fell, within one week, a prey to the first serious disease that attacked them, he made no lamentation, but he looked blasted, and in a month wasted to a skeleton. I once said to him, ‘Walter, God does not willingly grieve or afflict you.’ He replied with a calm voice of deep conviction, ‘Sarah, I am not deceived, I do not accuse Providence: “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.” When I took for a mother to my children, a woman without sense, without any just notions of life, without health, without one of the essential qualifications for the highest and holiest office of a woman, what should I have expected? – just what has come to pass. As I sowed, so have I reaped. Poor Fanny! poor Fanny! I pity her from the bottom of my heart. She, and you, and I, Sarah,’ and he pressed my hand with a desperate grip, ‘are all victims.’ ‘Of our own weakness and ignorance,’ I said. ‘In part, Sarah, in part,’ he replied; ‘but what have our religious teachers done to rectify, and counteract the false notions and false usages of society? Did our parents implant the views and principles on which the most important of all relations should be based? No, we were left to whim – to accident – to the feverish dreams of youth – and here we are – here we are – God help us!’ and he rushed out of the room, and left me crying bitterly. It was the first and last he ever said to me on the subject. A few months passed. Walter locked his secret griefs in his heart, and kept the key himself. In outward seeming he was the same man he had always been, noble, thoughtful for others, careless for himself, sometimes wise, and sometimes far otherwise. I cannot bear a harsher censure of one whose nature is so composed of all that sweetens, and vitalizes life – tears are due to his infirmities, not censure, Emma!

“O, Eleanor!” exclaimed Grace, “how strange that a man like Uncle Walter should go on so unchanged in character, so changed in circumstances. Just as he was when he married Aunt Fanny – when his children lived – when they died – when he lived in his own house on the Battery in open door hospitality – just so he now is, living with only a bedroom and a little parlor, in our third story, and with just a pittance to pay his bills. Let’s shut up the trunk. I am tired of it. Stop! what is this you have left out? A pocketbook marked with grandpapa’s name – if there should be a treasure in it?”

She unclasped the pocketbook, and exclaimed, “There is! there is! a letter from Uncle Walter – the single letter of his life, I think, for I never heard of his putting pen to paper. Bless us! written – oh, how long ago – when he was in Yale College.”

Grace began to read aloud.

My Dear Father:

“But, Grace!” interposed Eleanor, “is this quite right? We should ask Uncle Walter’s leave – there may be a secret.”

“A college boy’s secret, ages ago. Eleanor, you are too absurdly scrupulous. I’ll confess and take all the blame.”

Grace read aloud.

My Dear Father:

My filial duty and my unlimited confidence in both your justice and generosity would have induced long since the communication I am about to make, but it was deferred by the griefs my sister’s calamities brought upon you. I could not then add another bitter drop to your full cup. I must no longer delay. Six months since –

“O, stop there, Grace,” cried Eleanor, spreading her hand over the page, “we must not read another word.”

“No, we must not,” replied Grace, hurriedly refolding the letter; “but is it not too bad, just as we perceived the flavor of the apple, and had our teeth upon it? How much better we are than Eve! I always thought her a remarkable specimen of human infirmity.” Grace, looking again at the seal and at the superscription, tossed it into the trunk, saying, “Lock the trunk, Eleanor, and hide the key from me, lest at some weak moment – No, no, hand me the letter. I will give it to Uncle Walter; he’ll not object to my reading it – it concerns some college prank, or some transient love madness. Perhaps it is that ‘first love’ alluded to in Aunt Sarah’s letter?”

“Most likely; Uncle Walter was not the kind of man to repeat his loves.”

“I don’t know that. I have heard him say men have forty before they marry, and I believe him.”

“I do not, Grace; I have more faith in man’s loyalty.”

“Of course, Eleanor; being yourself made after the divine pattern – knowing no variableness. Don’t look so solemn, I mean no irreverence. I’ll refer it to our clerical oracle – perhaps you don’t know whom I mean?”

“I do.”

“Ah, you do!” Both sisters smiled. “I’ll ask Mr Esterly, then,” continued Grace, “and if he sees a mote in my eye – why, I’ll clutch at the beam in his.”

“What do you mean, Grace?”

“He was admiring the harmonious proportions of your character, my dear; the admirable consistency of your conduct; and I said it was not then quite so absurd as I had imagined, in Miss Hannah More to send forth her knight errant, ‘Coelebs in Search of a Wife,’ with the motto, ‘Expect not perfection, but look for consistency!’ Without listening to me, he murmured, as if ruminating on his own thoughts, ‘Montaigne says that perfect consistency is to be expected alone of Omnipotence.’

“Eleanor!

“Quel vago impallidor che ‘l dolce riso,

D’un amorosa nebbia ricopersi!’”

Eleanor’s face was, indeed, covered with a rush of blushes and smiles, quickly changing to paleness and gravity. It was such a change as might chance to a Turkish lady’s face, from whom her lover had torn her veil. But Eleanor’s heart was still impenetrably veiled from her sister’s eye; and when a servant opened the door, and said, “Mr Esterly is below, Miss Eleanor;” “Did he ask only for Miss Eleanor, John?” she inquired.

“Yes, Miss, and no mistake.”

“That’s odd!” said Grace. “Ah! now I recollect – he told me he was coming to ask you, Eleanor, to take a class in his Sunday School, or sewing school, or some such parochial affair. If he asks for me to go on with our Petrarch, tell him I am engaged. I don’t feel like it; my heart is in that old green trunk.”

Though Grace fancied her interest was monopolized by one subject, she set the door ajar, and listened eagerly for Esterly’s retiring footsteps; and when her sister, after a long delay, returned, she said: “Have you been all this time arranging your Sunday School, Eleanor?”

“Mr Esterly came to ask me to take a class in it,” she replied.

“Did he seem offended that I put him off?”

“O, forgive me, Grace, I forgot to tell him.”

“And he forgot to ask! Of course, he was offended, or hurt, or something of that sort. Lovers – I don’t mean that, but – he is so sensitive. Eleanor, how you flush today. Our stepmother is right for once; she says you are not well; that you are getting nervous with all these schools and societies. She says Mr Esterly imposes on you. Do not look so injured – it was her remark, not mine. She said, with her usual jealousy for you – you angel! you are never jealous for yourself – that while Mr Esterly spent hours dawdling over the piano with me, and reading Italian, if there were work to do, he turned it over to you.” She paused, and, as if uttering the result of her consideration, she added, “I wonder if all men commit the folly of preferring ‘le beau à l’utile!’ Ah! if Frailty’s the name of woman, Presumption is the name of girl.”

Chapter 2

“With prudence ever ready at our call,

To guide our use of it, is all in all.”

We reckon the hours made happy by the presence of some people. Does it ever occur to us to reckon those made happy by the absence of some other people? On the evening after the reading of the old letters, Eleanor and her sister were sitting together in Mrs Herbert’s drawing room. “Blessings on him who invented the opera, as Sancho says of sleep,” said Grace; “four evenings this week it has relieved us from Anne. She kills the atmosphere for me!” Grace was anti-sympatica to Miss Anne Carlton, her stepmother’s daughter, a young lady about her own age, and a type of a class of young ladies who vegetate in our society. The class is easily described: their individuality requires a mental microscope. She was educated at a fashionable boarding school, where learned and excellent professors, each in his allotted sixty minutes, like a bit of India rubber, effaced from Miss Anne’s mind, as from all but exceptional absorbents, what his precedent had put in. She was a “perfect French scholar,” as the phrase goes; that is, she could write a French note with the natural grace of the language, and was versed in current phrases on common topics, which she spoke with a very tolerable accent for an outside barbarian: (that is, for one who has never seen Paris); and certainly she read French – French novels – with far more facility than she did anything English. She excelled in music, but as she held it vulgar to play in society, her professor’s word must be taken for that. But Miss Anne had accomplishments that no one could dispute. Her toilette was absolute perfection, so those versed in those “branches of learning” maintained. Her dresses, hats, and embroideries, were imported from the first artistes in Paris, and if her array did not surpass the “lilies of the field,” it was not the fault of these great dynasties. She could detect, as well as an English lady’s maid, an imitation lace, or fur, and feel almost as profound a scorn for the wearer too. Miss Anne was called “very clever” by her own clique, and she had rather a gift at a flippant repartee. She was very pretty too, tall, delicate, well made – corsets and French art having done half the making – with very regular features, a fair complexion, and with that halo of fashionable glory, the “air distingué,” which she very discreetly never impaired by the loud tones, and shouts, and pleasant shrieks, and rapid movements, and audacious pushings of our “fast young ladies.” In short, to use the parrot phrase of her society, Miss Carlton was “decidedly high-bred.”

What “chief end” of woman such a creature is to answer in life, must be solved by a deeper philosophy than ours.

She was at the opera. Her mother was occupied with some ladies in her library, organizing a book club after a model she had fallen in love with in Boston, during a recent visit to that emporium of literature. Mrs Herbert was great at organizing.

“How I wish Uncle Walter would come in,” said Grace; “we should have such a nice opportunity, this evening, to tease him out of his letter. No company – no fear of any. Ah! there he is; there’s his dear old hobbling step. It speaks to my heart, and my heart answers. Not many footsteps have this magic – I am beginning to listen for the sound of Frank Esterly’s.” She looked archly at her sister. “But, Eleanor, I am not sure it speaks to my heart yet – nous verrons. Welcome, dear Uncle Walter.” She drew his chair to the fire and put a footstool under his feet. “Now prepare for a siege,” she said, “and a surrender – but what’s the matter – are you not well?”

“Well – yes. But have you forgotten, child, that our everlasting lawsuit comes up tomorrow?”

“O, yes, I had forgotten it.”

“And you, Eleanor?”

“No, uncle, I must confess to anxious thoughts of it twenty times today.”

“You are a girl of some sense, Eleanor. Here is a cause to be decided tomorrow, which will make us very rich – or leave us –”

“Not very poor, Uncle Walter,” said Grace; “we have enough, and more would only inflict on us more care and responsibility. Now, is not that as sensibly said as if my sister Eleanor had spoken it?”

“Upon my word, Grace, it is spoken to the purpose, and it reminds me of Esterly’s last Sunday’s homily. You take his sermons to heart, child.”

“Perhaps I do – but the truth is, we have been up and down so many times with this interminable lawsuit, that to me it seems a mere idle play upon our fears and hopes.”

“I trust, Grace, that your professed indifference is more sincere than Mr Horace Copley’s.”

“Why more sincere, Uncle Walter? he talks about it as he would about the chance of a fair or foul day. He told me at Mrs Stillman’s matinée, that his only interest in its final settlement is, that he may never again see ‘Copley versus Herbert.’”

“You are young, Grace.” This exclamation was accompanied by a peculiar laugh of Uncle Walter’s, which had a slight expression of derision.

“And I hope I shall die young,” retorted Grace, “if I must become suspicious, distrustful, and unbelieving, as I grow older.”

“Tut, tut, Grace! Mr Horace Copley is undoubtedly the glass of fashion, and a most sweet-spoken and plausible young gentleman.”

“Uncle Walter!”

“I really do not know that he has any other qualities to entitle him to your faith; to be sure he drives four-in-hand admirably; he rides almost as well as the gentry of the circus; he is the lover of married women, and the flatterer of young ladies. And yet, Grace, when he has contested for three years – point by point – a property that I believe in my soul rightfully belongs to us, and has been so ruled by three successive decisions, from which he has appealed, I can not – quite – trust him, Grace, when he assures you at a ‘matinée musicale,’ that he is indifferent to the result. He knows that we are not – you, and I, and Nelly – the only heirs of my father, living. A hundred, or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars will make a difference to us, though with his million or more, you may be imposed on by his matinée musicale declaration that he does not care a pin’s head for such a trifle. No, no, my child, the richer men are, the more they covet, and if he does not crave the property – if that be possible – he desires the victory.

“His lawyer, Cranly, knows him thoroughly; he says Copley is a man of an umbending will. This is a mighty force – a steam power. If he has as yet applied it only to lifting the lid of a teakettle, he will move a ship with it, and shipwreck us; and with this inflexible purpose, he has a subtle, gentle, insinuating manner, that I don’t like –”

“That you detest, you mean, Uncle Walter.”

“Thank you, Grace, yes – I do – it’s false – it’s false.”

No man was less addicted to vituperation than Walter Herbert. He unequivocally expressed his likings and dislikings, but usually merely by a turn of the eye, a motion of the lips, some scarcely articulate sound of pleasure, or displeasure: such an emission of words was as startling as a sudden shower in a drought.

“What has happened to trouble you, dear uncle?” asked Eleanor.

“That’s just what I came home to tell you. Mr Jones sent for me this afternoon. He is suddenly taken seriously ill. His going into court is out of the question – the cause must come on. It has already once lain over on account of a similar attack of his. The briefs are ready. Now the point to be decided is this: Jones has a junior partner – a young man of ability – destined to the head of his profession, Jones says. Well, this young man has had the preparation of our cause. He is thoroughly acquainted with our ground and our adversary’s. He knows all the intricacies of the case through records, and traditions, etc., etc. – these land titles are the devil and all to manage – and in short, though he has never argued a cause of magnitude, Jones inclines to our permitting him to go into court with it in preference to giving it to a practiced pleader, who can not, on so short a notice, become as perfectly familiar with its details as one who has worked them out. Besides this, Mr Horace Copley has retained the best advocates in the city, with his precious indifference to the result. Forgive me, girls; I hate sham. What do you say, children? Will you trust the young man?”

“You and Eleanor must settle it between you,” said Grace, with girlish pique. Her feathers had been a second time ruffled by her uncle’s persevering disparagement of a young man, who, though not her professed lover, had been marked in his admiration of her.

“Well, my dear, I rather think we are best qualified to settle it. What say you, Eleanor?”

“Have you seen the young man, uncle?”

“Yes.”

“How does he impress you?”

“Why, at first – I don’t mean at first, exactly, for I have often seen him in Jones’s office, but he was always absorbed in business. I merely noticed a fine countenance, with too much in it to be worn thin and pale in a lawyer’s office; but an hour ago, when I asked him if he were willing to go forward, he hesitated; I think it was the hesitation of true modesty and scrupulousness, not of timidity or self-distrust. There is a sparkle in his eye that indicates fire in his soul. I take to the young man greatly. He said that he was thoroughly familiar with the case, and too much interested in it to be, as he hoped, embarrassed by self consciousness; and it seemed to me very plain that it would gratify him to be trusted with the argument, – I incline to leave it in his hands.”

Eleanor had not implicit faith in her uncle’s discretion. “Can not we,” she said, “learn something of his standing at the bar except from Counselor Jones’s opinion? He may overestimate him. What is his name?”

“What a jewel of prudence you are, my dear little Eleanor. His name, ‘an it please you,’ is Archibald Lisle.”

“Archibald Lisle!” echoed both the girls in a breath.

“Yes, young ladies, ‘Archibald – Lisle.’ What is there startling in the name?”

“He was a classmate of Mr Esterly’s,” replied Eleanor, blushing at a smile quivering on her uncle’s lip, “and is his friend.”

“Ah! and he is the friend of your friend, too, Grace?”

Grace did not reply immediately. She was wondering how it was that her sister should be acquainted with facts in Mr Esterly’s life that she was ignorant of; but returning to the point, she replied to her uncle: “O, all that I know about this young lawyer is, that he led me out to dinner at Mr Jones’s, where you know Mrs Herbert dragged me. I may well remember him. He spilt a glass of claret over a new white silk dress! Eleanor restored it with her magical manipulation the next day, and so I forgot it. Poor fellow! he was so embarrassed by his blunder that he did not speak five words after it, though he had been very charming before, talking most agreeably. I told this to Horace Copley and Anne, who made game of his awkwardness; Miss Anne criticising the tie of his neckcloth, and Copley laughing at his frock coat, and shambling gait, which he called the true ‘lawyers’ clerk’s air.’ O, now I recall him perfectly – a very fine face, lighting up as he spoke, and a dark gray, thoughtful eye, looking a little wearied, as if hardworked; and when something pleased him, such a stream of light came pouring through it. Yes; give the cause to him by all means, Uncle Walter.”

“Girls are odd fish,” said Mr Herbert, laughing; “I saw the young man half an hour ago, but I could not have described his eye so truly. And you, Eleanor, does the dark gray, thoughtful eye decide you, or Frank Esterly’s friendship? or perhaps the friendship without the eye?”

“Whatever it is, uncle,” replied Eleanor, “I am quite willing to trust the advocacy to Mr Lisle.”

“And so am I –”

“And so are we all – three pretty, verdant young folks together, the world will probably pronounce us.” And probably would decree Uncle Walter the most spring-like and immature of the three, as he had been decided by an attraction to the young man indefinable to himself, one of those mysterious correspondencies which modern (soi disant) science calls magnetism.

He was hurrying out of the room, to communicate the decision to the young advocate, when Grace arrested him, and in her sweetest voice – its sweetest tone was a syren’s to his ear – “Now, Uncle Walter,” she said, “you can’t go a step, if our bread depends on it, till you have granted me one favor.”

“What you will, child – let me go. Whatever you have to ask, take it for granted I have said yes.”

Grace snapped her fingers, and kissing him, cried, “That’s enough – now go, dear old uncle.”

“No, no, Grace – it is not enough,” said Eleanor. “Stop, Uncle Walter – come back – one moment. We found a long letter of yours today in an old trunk of grandpapa’s, that we were overlooking –”

“A long letter from me, child! It can’t be; I never wrote a long letter in my life – never – but one,” he added, his face suddenly clouding, “and that letter – surely my father did not preserve that? Where is the letter, Eleanor? Grace, where is it?”

Grace thrust her hand into her pocket, and produced it. He unfolded it and glanced at its contents, then crumpled it in his hand, and threw it in the grate. In a breath its substance vanished. “Type of my life,” he said, in a low, mournful voice. Then crossing his hands behind him, he walked slowly to and fro. Pausing, and turning to his nieces, he added, “Ask no more questions, my children. There was nothing of any import to you in that letter; nothing to me – now. Its substance is written here,” putting his hands on his bosom; “it has run a dark thread through my whole life. Sad, sad, are the results of our ignorance and our errors.”

He wiped away the tears that gushed over his cheeks, left the room, and slowly and heavily walked out of the house.

“Eleanor!” exclaimed Grace, “what can this mean? If we had but read a little further!”

“Thank heaven, that we did not, Grace.”

“It was no discretion of mine, and therefore I can’t thank heaven for it. It is not mere curiosity, Eleanor; Uncle Walter and I, you know, are the most intimate of friends. I can not bear to have a leaf in his life that I have not read, a fold in his heart hidden from me.”

“There is not, dear Grace. It does not seem to me that the facts of our life are important; but the character that is formed from them. The herb is worthless after its essence is distilled.”

“O, my dear sister reason, and religion. Well, I will try to follow in your shining footsteps, only I must pine to know what brought that shower of tears over Uncle Walter’s dear old face.”

Chapter 3

“There is grace in his lips.”

Let us look into the apartment of a young lawyer preparing his first great case. The room is in the upper story of a lodging house, comfortable and respectable, but without pretension to style or luxury of any sort. There is a forgotten fire in the grate, that, thanks to the enduring quality of anthracite, has not quite mouldered away. The apartment has the aspect of a careless bachelor’s, and a devout student’s. We will not impertinently explore drawers of unfolded vests, and odd gloves, or mark articles of apparel lying anywhere but where they should be. Sins of omission and commission against order were the inconvenient frailties of our friend. But these did not extend to his books and papers. As some priests apply their religion to their sacerdotal, and not at all to their secular life; so our young lawyer was fastidiously orderly in his professional and literary affairs. A moderate sized bookcase was filled with books and lexicons in various languages, indicating the wide horizon of his general culture, and a table at which he was sitting was covered with law books, briefs, and notes, carefully classed. There he sat, intently studying the points of his case till two o’clock in the morning, occasionally pacing his room, addressing the gentlemen of the jury in a voice that startled from their slumbers the women lodgers in the neighboring rooms, who, between their dreams and their fancies, made out an alarming tale for the next morning’s breakfast.

After having put his law papers in his satchel with the confidence which only a man very young in the profession could entertain that there was not a chance against his clients, he took a sheet of letter paper, and opened a drawer containing his private correspondence. Therein was a file of letters from the good old father at home, filled with wise counsel, abundantly enforced with texts from the Old and New Testaments. Beside these, there were letters written in large round hand from little half-brothers – prodigious first efforts – thanking “brother Archy” for presents of books, and skates, etc., etc., etc., and a file of notes, delicate hair strokes, every margin and corner filled with the lingerings of feminine love, and marked “From dear little Letty.” The most bulky parcel was slipped into a morocco case, and inscribed “Arthur Clifford, Abiit non Obiit.”

Near this was a substantial file, written in a good, strong, old-fashioned hand, inscribed “From my dear mother-friend, Mrs Clifford.” Tucked into the same parcel were two or three notes in the ambitious chirography of a little girl, marked “Dear little Alice.” Beside these last was an unfiled letter, which Archibald Lisle opened, and answered as follows:

My Dear Mrs Clifford:

I am going into court tomorrow to advocate, for the first time, a cause of importance, and to secure or lose for my clients real estate in the upper part of the city, likely to become of great value. I have explored titles a century back, when this property was a waste rocky field – now, a noble avenue bounds it. It was originally purchased by two gentlemen of the names of Herbert and Copley, and, singular enough, after various sales and transmissions, the controversy is now between descendants of the original purchasers, ‘Copley versus Herbert.’ My clients, the Herberts, are an elderly gentleman, and two young ladies, who, though somewhat decayed in fortune, are yet of unquestioned aristocracy. Their progenitors belonged to the colonial gentry – there is still a remnant of that Israel. Mr Herbert – Walter Herbert, Esq. – I have seen repeatedly. He is a fine old fellow, tall, still erect, and robust, with thick hair of silver sable, an eye like an eagle, and a heart of gold. The young ladies are his nieces; one, a bright particular star, I have seen once only; but, once seen, she is never to be forgotten.

My friend, Frank Esterly, is devoted to these lovely sisters, but which is the object of his pursuit I do not know, nor am I quite sure he would dare to raise his hopes to either. They are a constellation quite apart from the belles of the city got up by boarding schools, and French milliners. You may wonder, my dear friend, that I dare take the responsibility of a suit of such importance, and for such parties. I have gone forward on the advice and recommendation of Counselor Jones, and on the conviction that I am better acquainted with the bearings of the case than another man can be, having studied and prepared it with infinite pains; and thus I have taken a bond of Fate, and made assurance doubly sure. Besides my professional zeal, I have the romantic aspiration of a champion of these fair dames; and to tell you the whole truth, I should like to foil this Horace Copley. He is an idle young man, with an immense inherited fortune, and, I am told, is reckoned the first prize in the matrimonial lottery of fashionable life here. He is an Apollo (in little) so elaborately exquisite in his dress, and all his appointments, that he is esteemed the glass of fashion. He is fastidious in his preferences among women, and only demonstrative to pretty married ladies, who are supposed to wear their bonds lightly. I have a dislike to his genus, and I confess to a personal pique against the man. I once dined in company with him. Miss Grace Herbert was one of the party. He was hovering about her with the expectation, no doubt, of leading her to dinner. Our hostess assigned that honor to me. She is a brilliant, most captivating young woman, and I was just losing my shyness, forgetting my country breeding and myself, when a lady on my right hand said something in a low tone to Copley. I heard only my name, and his reply, ‘From New England; clever, I understand; but, as you see, a vulgar fellow. His frock coat at a dinner party betrays his style of life. He is the son of a mechanic.’ ‘Dear me!’ exclaimed the young lady, ‘how odd of Mrs Jones to mix her company that way.’ I had just filled my glass with claret. My hand trembled, the ruddy wine spilled over, and went rippling down Miss Herbert’s lustrous silk. I stammered apologies. I half rose from my chair, dropped my knife and fork on the carpet, seized the unfortunate young lady’s embroidered handkerchief, and did all that a bashful, blundering blockhead might to attract attention; and, to crown my confusion, I met Copley’s eye. I shall never forget the supercilious sneer on his face. It was in vain that Miss Herbert was gracious and kind, and ready to laugh it off with a woman’s ready wit. I could not recover myself. I was mute through the remaining courses, that seemed to me slow and solemn as a funeral procession, and when the ladies withdrew, I made my escape. When I came to myself I was thoroughly ashamed that Copley’s impertinent malice should have moved me. I am proud enough of having my birthright in New England, and God knows how I honor my ‘mechanic’ father, with, if I mistake not, a juster and nobler pride of birth than that of all the Howards. But, my dear Mrs Clifford, there are atmospheric influences under which we take the world’s coin at its own impress and estimate. I was young, and green, and so took Copley’s, but once out of his presence I recovered my manhood, and trampled it under my feet. ‘Why then,’ do you ask, ‘do you retain so vivid a memory of it?’ I confess it has left a scar, but I have graver grounds of dislike to the man. When I come to Mapleton, we will talk them over. In that dear rural district the cocks are crowing, and I must to bed, to dream of tomorrow’s fight. My love to my ‘dainty spirit, Eye-bright.’ Do not let her grow out of her short dresses before I see her. Ah! I forget that she has leaped over three years since we parted, and that my ‘little Alice,’ is now fourteen.”

The cause, Copley versus Herbert, was called, heard, and decided the next day, and decided against Lisle’s clients. The contested property had passed through the hands of tories and refugees, it was complicated with the disputes preceding our Revolution, and entangled with the uncertain legislation relating to confiscated property subsequent to it. The modesty and faltering of the young advocate, in the beginning of his argument, did not promise the admirable clearness and precision with which he stated and maintained the points of his case, and his mastery of the law and precedents relating to it; and when he finished his plea, crowning his success with the rare graces of courtesy and candor, he sat down with the general belief of all the parties in the crowded courtroom – except Copley and his lawyer – judge, jurors, and audience, that he had gained the victory.

But, alas! for the “glorious uncertainty of the law.” The plaintiff’s counsel produced evidence – which, with his characteristic, and often inexplicable love of mystery, Copley had concealed till now – of a transfer of the disputed property by an uncle of Walter Herbert’s to a relative of Copley’s, while they were both residing in England as tory refugees. This vitiated Lisle’s evidence, and overthrew the argument based upon it.

“It was a scurvy trick,” said Walter Herbert, “underground work. Good fellows, when they know they hold the honors, call out.”

“Pardon me,” said Copley, insinuating his way through the friends that encircled Walter Herbert, “you must exonerate me, sir. After we had agreed to refer the matter to the adjustment of a legal tribunal, it was my lawyer’s duty to collect what evidence he could. I had nothing to do with it, and I regret the stubbornness of unexpected facts as much as you can.” When Copley first spoke, Mr Herbert started, as he might if a snake had crawled over his foot, and then fixing his open, honest eye upon the young man, he laughed in his throat a laugh peculiar to himself, and expressing a true man’s contempt of subterfuge.

Copley’s cheek blanched, and his lip quivered, but he had too much at stake to commit himself, and shrugging his shoulder, he said quietly, “As you please, sir,” and withdrew.

“You were rather hard upon the young man,” said one of Walter Herbert’s friends to him.

“Tut, tut,” he replied, “I know him.”

“But,” urged his friend, “if your niece is the lucky girl the world says, it will be all the same in the end. The money will only be in the right hand instead of the left, or vice versa.”

A black cloud came over Walter Herbert’s clear brow, and he turned uneasily away, when his eye met Archibald Lisle’s, and he pushed his way through the old cronies that surrounded him to where the young man stood, pensive and disappointed, and unheeding the compliments showered upon him. “You have gained your fortune, my dear fellow,” he said heartily, “if we have lost ours.” And then, dropping his voice, added, “Come and take your tea with us this evening, and you shall see we will hail your laurels, though we have lost the battle.”

Chapter 4

“Fortune has no weapon that reaches the mind.”

Grace Herbert had not seen Archibald Lisle since the memorable day when he enacted second part to Goldsmith’s bashful man. His blunders on that occasion had faded from her mind, while they had left an open wound in his memory, and it was that, much more than the failure of his advocacy, which caused his deep blush, and rather awkward embarrassment, when, after a generous heralding of “our young counselor,” Mr Herbert presented him to his nieces, saying, “You see they are cheerful losers; they know nothing of the power or value of money. How should they?”

“Indeed, how should we, Mr Lisle,” said Grace; “my uncle having been our teacher and exemplar through life?”

The look and the voice that had haunted the chambers of his memory for a year, electrified Lisle. This, and the presence of Mr Esterly, put him (in mesmeric phrase) into relation with his new acquaintance, and made him appear to them the rare and charming young man he was. Frank Esterly and Lisle had been classmates at Cambridge, and friends since, though of late their intercourse had been interrupted by the assiduous devotion of each to his profession – their different pursuits leading them to different associations.

The lawsuit was playfully discussed, and disposed of. Uncle Walter interjected some rather biting sarcasms against Copley, Eleanor gently interposing her shield, with the double purpose of turning the arrows from Copley and sheltering her sister. Grace, to a careless eye, might not have seemed sensitive to her uncle’s criticisms, but in relation to her, Lisle’s was not, even at this dayspring of their acquaintance, a careless eye.

The evening was passing away delightfully. They were certainly extraordinary parties in a lawsuit, whose gratitude for the masterly conduct of their cause was no wise impaired by its loss. “If you make such strides in your profession by losing a battle, Lisle,” said Mr Herbert, “what will you do when you gain one?”

“Thank you, Mr Herbert; but in this kind of fight the combatant can not separate his own gain from the loss of the parties he contends for.”

“No, a generous advocate can not. And I am satisfied, from my own observation, that in spite of the keen satires on lawyers, in spite of the vulgar bad opinion of them; in spite, too, of the disgraces accumulated by tricky pettifoggers and corrupt practitioners, yours is a profession that calls out the noblest qualities. I do not mean merely intellectual qualities – that no one disputes.”

“You surely do not mean the highest moral qualities,” interposed Esterly.

“But I do, though.”

“Ah,” replied Mr Esterly, smiling, “you speak for your own craft, sir. I had forgotten that you were bred to the profession.”

“I had nearly forgotten it, too. I studied law, and opened an office, but I have done nothing at it” – “and nothing in life,” for so might be interpreted the sigh that followed. “I have had plenty of time for observation and speculation. I have known a generation of lawyers in this city, half passed away in mid-career from overwork and over anxiety. I have known generous lawyers – I could name them – enter with more intensity into the interests of clients than if they were their own.”

“A little overdrawn, dear uncle,” said Grace.

“Not a particle, Grace – not a particle. No, such men as I allude to would, in their own case, have restrained their eagerness, from the fear of covetousness and selfishness. No, I speak by book. I have known these men to pass sleepless nights and feverish days, while their client’s cause hung wavering in the uncertain balance of the law. Think of the exhausting application of the faithful lawyer; think of the candor, the magnanimity, the self-control that may be elicited in the progress of a lawsuit, where an unfair opponent is to be met, and all the chances of sudden defeat at the moment of surest confidence, as in our case – utter shipwreck. No; the captain may cover himself with glory, but his heart goes down with the ship. Is it not so, Mr Counselor?”

“My short experience in the profession does not warrant my giving an opinion, sir.”

“That’s modest; so far so good. You, Mr Esterly, are of course pledged to your cloth; and you, Nelly,” he added, and finished the sentence in a whisper, that crimsoned her cheek. He patted her head, and smiled.

“Is not my opinion to be asked?” inquired Grace.

“Your opinion, my child. Excellent, as to the charm of a poem, or the merit of a song; but you are yet in your teens, and we wait till girls come of age before we ask their opinions on grave subjects.”

“I think it was my opinion, sir, in favor of trusting our cause to our able advocate here, which you graciously accepted, when my sister, Eleanor, my elder and better, rather stood aloof.”

Lisle’s eyes turned sparkling to Grace, while Mr Herbert said, laughingly, “O, a feather, Grace – a wild goose’s feather, will turn a scale! Eleanor is a reasonable being. You and I are ruled by our instincts.”

“I am content, Uncle Walter. Instinct is a divine inspiration – reason only a human ingenuity! But, Uncle Walter,” she added, “in your laudation of the legal profession, you have omitted the attribute, which most concerns us ladies. Sir Walter Scott says, ‘the best society is that of lawyers.’” Without any purpose, beyond a tilt of her wit with her uncle, Grace had already said enough to charm a young man who, in his narrow social sphere, had never chanced to meet a young woman with rare gifts, set off by high breeding, and the mighty accessories of youth and beauty. Lisle would have detected worldliness or artificialness, by the test of his own simplicity and sincerity; but the seeming contrarieties of Grace Herbert’s character, her quick mutations, her deep thoughtfulness, and sudden irradiations, were surprises, and, strange to say, had the fascination of riddles to plain dealers like Lisle.

Lisle was not versed in music. He was ignorant of the terms of the art, and even of the phrases and names on the lips of every frequenter of operas nowadays; but rarely had Grace been so acceptably flattered as when, sitting down to her piano at her uncle’s bidding, and playing an Adagio of Beethoven at his suggestion, she accidentally turned her eye up to Lisle and saw his face glowing, and his eye moistened. This, perhaps, gave an impulse to her genius, for on Mr Herbert asking her to repeat it, she did it with so much effect that he cried out “Bravo, my child! Now sing me my song, ‘An old English Gentleman.’ When Grace wants to flatter me, Mr Lisle, she tells me I am the original of that old song, so we agree to call it my song. Go on, Grace.”

Grace sang it with expression and charming significance, and, coming to the lines,

And quaffed a cup of good old wine, etc., etc.,

she turned her face fondly to her Uncle Walter. At the first swell of her voice, Esterly, who was sitting beside Eleanor, sprang to her side and joined her with so much unction, singing, as Archibald thought, so much better than he had ever heard his friend sing before, that the thought arose – and a pang came with it – “it must be Miss Grace he is in love with.”

As she faltered at the last stanza of the song, to Lisle’s evident vexation, Horace Copley entered. Slightly bowing to the company he approached Grace, and said, “Have you forgotten your engagement, Miss Herbert? Salvi and the prima donna are at Mrs Tallis’s, and they have been waiting half an hour for you.”

“I had forgotten – utterly. Have you a carriage at the door?”

“Yes; Mrs Tallis ordered me here.”

Grace rang the bell, told the servant to bring her hat and shawl, made a hurried apology to Archibald Lisle, and disappeared, as he thought, like a beautiful vision.

“Confound his impudence!” muttered Walter Herbert, kicking the stool from under his gouty foot.

The curtain had fallen, and Mr Esterly and Lisle took their leave. The door had scarcely closed on them, when Lisle asked, “Is Copley intimate in this house, Frank?”

“Yes – no, not exactly intimate. He is very well received by Mrs Herbert, who has a handsome daughter, and likes the éclât of his visits.”

‘Is Frank so assured, that he is not disturbed by them?’ thought Lisle.

“Copley is so repugnant to the old gentleman,” continued Mr Esterly, “that I think he could scarcely be on intimate footing with his nieces.”

“And who,” inquired Lisle, “is the Mrs Tallis, who sent Copley for Miss Herbert?”

“Was it Mrs Tallis? I did not hear the name.”

“You seemed absorbed.”

“I was. I am always charmed with Grace Herbert’s music; there is soul as well as her delicious voice in it. Why this Mrs Tallis – is it possible you do not know who she is, Lisle? tell it not to ears polite, my dear fellow – she is the very pretty wife of a very clever and very rich man, Rupert Tallis. She stars it in the fashionable world. She was the beautiful Miss Clayton, and married a few years since to Tallis, contrary to her own inclinations, by her father’s decree, as the world says – and the world says further that Horace Copley is her rather too devoted admirer – but that may be mere scandal. She keeps a musical house, and has all the musical people there, the sort of society that Copley affects.”

“And is it possible,” exclaimed Lisle, “that this is the world that Miss Grace Herbert lives and moves, and has her being in?”

“O Archy – she is young, and what do young women know of the men who are the players in the play of this masked world of ours?”

“But they should know, Frank; and it is the business of you preachers to make them know. It is a sad comment on your profession, that generation after generation goes on, ignorantly plunging into the same vices, the same dangers, and the same destructien.”

“Well, good night, Archy. I’ll think of what you say.” And at the turn of the street, the friends parted and went their way, both chewing sweet fancies, and neither much troubling himself with social disorders.

Chapter 5

“Even a child is known by his doings.”

It is always a surprising, but a no less comfortable fact in human life, that no sooner does an event become inevitable, than all the hopes and projects that hung upon its decision are subdued to acquiescence. The mariner goes down calmly in the ship from which there is no deliverance. The criminal accepts the rope he cannot avoid, and millions “die with resignation” when death becomes certain; and, to resignation to death in life so frequent, in the indissoluble compact of marriage, the inevitable is the great argument.

The fine castle in the air, which Uncle Walter had built, in the shape of an independent home, in which he might set up housekeeping with his beloved nieces; the wise plans of charity that Eleanor had founded on the contingent fortune, and a tour to Italy, the land of her desires, which Grace had projected with her sister, and Uncle Walter, all vanished with the lost lawsuit, and this most unworldly trio, reverted, with hardly a sigh of regret, to the beaten track of their daily life.

The winter was wearing on; Mr Esterly was ordained rector over one of the fullest and most fashionable congregations of the city. The gossips who mark every straw that blows athwart the path of a popular unmarried clergyman, did not fail to speculate upon his assiduous visits at Mrs Herbert’s.

“How odd people are!” said Miss Anne Carlton to her mamma. “What do they mean by teasing me about Mr Esterly. It is too absurd.”

“Not exactly absurd, my dear.” We take the liberty to express Mrs Herbert’s emphasis by italics. In no other mode can her oracular style be rendered. “There would be nothing inconsistent with propriety or probability in Mr Esterly addressing you.”

“Addressing me! O, that’s quite une autre chose. I flatter myself I have had admirers quite equal in every way to the Rev. Francis Esterly, but the idea of being engaged to him is quite horrid.”

“Not horrid, Anne! – I wish, my dear child, you would study accuracy of expression – not horrid, but not fitting. A fortune like yours, would be rather an encumbrance to a clergyman, though he might so use, and dispense it – ”

“O, mamma!” cried the reverent young lady, interrupting her mother, “there is no use in your moralizing yourself into a fog about it. Clergymen are just as fond as other men of marrying fortunes, and care just as little as others how, as you say, they use and dispense them. But to return to the Rev. Francis Esterly: I would not marry him if he were to offer himself forty times over. Eleanor and Grace are quite welcome to him. Their fortunes won’t encumber him. Do you think he sincerely fancies either of them?”

“I am not sure. I make it a rule never to be confident. The most sagacious may be at fault as to who will marry who; but this much I will say – if either, Grace.”

“O, of course, Grace,” replied the young lady, petulantly, “she is always putting herself forward, and Eleanor is so retiring – worth a million of Grace, I could tell them, if they asked my advice. Miss Grace Herbert, with all her outspokenness, keeps her cards to herself, and plays them well, too, while poor Eleanor thinks nothing of the game. It’s my private opinion, mamma, that Grace is just finessing with Esterly, to catch that king of trumps, Copley.”

“I wish, Anne, you would not use the phrases of the whist table, they are not graceful ‘for so young a lady.’”

“Then, in plain phrase, Grace will never accept the reverend, while she has the faintest hope of Horace Copley.”

“But she cannot have even the faintest hope.”

“Why, if you please, ma’am?” Now the mother was on the point of saying what the daughter was longing to hear; but both were, in their different modes, wise in their generation, and neither would confess to the other her secret speculations and hopes upon the ulterior possibilities in the case of Horace Copley. The self-believing oracle answered oracularly. “I can’t tell you, Anne, all the grounds of my opinion. So many circumstances come into the formation of our conclusions, which, after all, may be erroneous; you know Copley admires Grace; certainly she is very clever, and she is thought beautiful, though you and I are not of that opinion; and it is impossible to say what a young person of her powers may accomplish. But I have known Horace Copley from his childhood, and I think I know him thoroughly. Copley is not altogether an open character. Not so frank as I like, for frankness indicates – hem – hem – many virtues.”

“That’s right, mamma, club them, I hate items.”

“My dear,” recommenced Mrs Herbert, reprovingly, “I was going on to say, that Copley is the sort of man to amuse himself, now flirting with Mrs Tallis, and now playing upon Grace’s vanity, while he has all the while a serious purpose at heart, that he will cautiously withhold till the right time comes.”

“O, fiddle-faddle, mamma! he knows he can have any girl in New York for the asking. What’s the use of caution? No, I’ll tell you what it is: he is a pretty gay boy, and means to enjoy his freedom a little longer. I have heard some nice gossip about him, as secret as he is.”

“My dear Anne, you should never listen to such sort of gossip, nor allude to it. A young lady of true delicacy should be ignorant of everything of the kind, and never imagine the possibility of its existence. It’s quite time to find out your husband’s aberrations after you are married.”

“Well, mamma, you are funny! But do tell me, was there not some talk of a match between Copley and me among you old folks when we were children?”

“Anne, I request you not to use such terms. It’s neither polite nor respectful. If there is any virtue I do admire, it is reverence.”

“Oh, so do all old people! but you know I never mean anything by what I say, so, please answer my question.”

“Well, my dear, there was among us some talk of the kind you allude to, neither serious, nor quite jesting. Your dear father’s beautiful estate adjoined Elm Grove, and old Mr Copley had a passion for a great landed property. He had lived in England, and was quite the English gentleman, and your father was quite different; he liked bonds and mortgages, and stocks, and so on; he acquired his fortune by commerce, you know.”

“No, I do not know. I never knew how papa got his great fortune; what kind of commerce was it?”

“Merchandise, Anne.”

“Yes, but what kind?”

“Why, he dealt in the staff of life – flour.”

“Oh, he was a flour merchant, then?”

Mrs Carlton nodded assent, but she forbore telling her daughter that his fortune was made and moulded in a baker’s shop.

“My child,” resumed Mrs Herbert, “our country is progressive. One should not look to antecedents; the chances are, that more than half our fashionable people would run their heads against mechanics or tradespeople, or something of that very disagreeable sort. We have our snobs – a species of vulgarity and humbug, out of place, and quite ridiculous in our democratic republic.”

“But, mamma,” said the young lady, after a thoughtful pause, “our antecedents, as you call them, were gentry, were they not?”

“Ye – yes. You surely know, Anne, that I was distantly related, through my mother, to my husband’s family.” Mrs Herbert sunk her antecedent father, who began a peddler, and ended a millionare.

“It is provoking,” said Anne, “that our gentle blood should come through the Herbert channel. There’s not one of them I desire to be related to – I except Eleanor. Well,” she continued, rising, and trying before a glass some flowers she had been rearranging for her hair, “we shall see how it will end. The plot thickens. Here is this wonderful young lawyer coming to see old Mr Herbert. Hum! he sees no one, heeds no one, but Grace. Would you let them droop on the right side, mamma? So – is not that effect charming? The dress of the head ‘exige beaucoup de génie,’ as Madame says. I should like to solve the mystery of Grace’s attractions. She has height; but Madame Lakay says her figure is not comparable to mine – nor is her complexion to Eleanor’s – nor is she in anything to Eleanor.”

It may well be asked, why such a thing as Anne Carlton should be able to do a kind of justice to Eleanor? In the first place, she had no rivalry with her. But better than that, the sweetness of Eleanor’s temper, her Christianly wisdom and simplicity, surrounded her with an atmosphere that exorcised the bad and elicited the good. In Scripture phrase, “she overcame evil with good.”

Mrs Herbert resumed: “If you were acquainted with science, Anne, you would know the positive demands the negative. Copley appreciates the advantage of fortune and position – Grace disdains them. He is secretive – she disdains secrecy.”

“Yes, indeed; she is as proud as if she were an empress.”

“O, no, my dear, not exactly proud. You should analyze – you should study human nature.”

“I never shall. It is the dullest study in human life; those that study it most make the greatest blunders, in my judgment. I would like to know if any analysis of human nature would tell me why Horace Copley did not dance with Grace last evening, but once with me, and ever so many times with Mrs Tallis.”

“With whom did Grace dance, Anne?”

“She did not dance. She was talking the first half of the evening with the reverend, and the last half with the lawyer.”

“You don’t say Mr Esterly was there?”

“He was. Why should he not be? I am sure neither you nor he think there is any harm in dancing.”

“Certainly not; but a clergyman should not shock public opinion.”

“O, I rather think Mr Esterly cares more for his own conscience than for public opinion,” said Anne, for once, in her contrarieties to her mother, hitting a sound truth. “But perhaps,” she added, “he bowed his head to that Dagon, public opinion, for he went home early, and left the field to Lisle, who, I’ll answer for it, does not know a polka from a redowa.”

“Did Mr Copley lead Mrs Tallis out to supper?” asked Mrs Herbert, with the air of one who is making out the points in a case.

“No – but he did lead me out to supper. And now what do you say?”

“That’s well; but I can’t quite interpret him. One must see with one’s own eyes. Perhaps he wished to pique Grace. He may have intended to make capital with you, for I am sorry to say, Anne, you seem to prefer the ultra-fashionable young men, who flirt with married ladies. Or, after all, he may think that Grace is on the brink of an engagement with Esterly, and so thrown out.”

“Oh, mamma, that is as satisfactory as if you had ‘seen with your own eyes.’ Would it not be delightful to have Grace married? Such a dull marriage, too! Three girls are two too many for one house.”

“My dear, you know it’s my pride that you all live in harmony.”

“Yes, but the music would be better if there were but one instrument. Poor Eleanor, she is a dear; but I always thought it would be her fate to be an old maid!”

Chapter 6

“What’s to say,

May be said briefly: She has never known

A mother’s care.”

Mrs Herbert’s family were punctual churchgoers, and none of them wandered from their own fold excepting Grace. She sometimes strayed away to hear an eloquent preacher, or fine music, to her more eloquent; or to lend her imagination to the ritual of the elder church. Of late, she was invariably in her own place in Mr Herbert’s pew, seated between Eleanor and her Uncle Walter. Poor Grace had such strong magnetic repulsions as well as attractions, that it overset her devotions to sit next Mrs Herbert or Miss Carlton.

Mrs Herbert observed that Grace’s eye was fixed on the rector, and that even he could see the tears that stole from that beautiful eye over her glowing cheek. Mrs Herbert rejoiced in salient facts in her study of human nature. “No man resists this sort of flattery,” she thought, and she saw the field clearing for her daughter. Eleanor’s quiet demeanor was in no way changed. She sat with her head inclined downward, in a listening and meditative posture.

The family had returned one Sunday evening from a charity sermon, which had made all the women in the church cry, and most of the men give. Grace’s mercury was up to that fervid point, which is an ordinary temperature with enthusiastic young women of eighteen. She had a remarkably retentive memory and imitative powers. She repeated long passages from the sermon with Mr Esterly’s intonation and manner. Eleanor listened for a while, with a pensive smile, then bidding her good night, she went to her room.

“Oh! Uncle Walter,” exclaimed Grace, “how I wish Eleanor had a little more enthusiasm!”

“Eleanor’s enthusiasm,” replied Mr Herbert, “turns the mill, while yours, Grace, plays the fountain. She was out doors yesterday, the mercury at zero, from ten A.M. to five P.M., in behalf of this charity for which your paragon was so eloquent, and you are so excited.”

“But do you not think, brother,” interposed his sister-in-law, “that different persons have different demonstrations? For instance –”

“Oh never mind the instance, ma’am,” cried Grace. “Why do you call Mr Esterly my paragon, Uncle Walter? I am sure all his people are raving about him.”

“Yes, doing all they can, as they do for every clever young clergyman, to spoil him. I grant you, young and old rant about him – all – excepting Eleanor.” Mr Herbert made the exception slowly and emphatically.

The sisters occupied one apartment, and slept in the same bed. Grace was nettled by Mr Herbert’s implied rebuke. She could better bear the whole world’s disapprobation than her Uncle Walter’s. She soon followed her sister. She found Eleanor sitting under the gaslight, reading the Bible. She did not directly address her, but, walking up and down the room, continued her citations from the sermon, till, craving sympathy, she appealed to her sister. “Now, Eleanor, was not that exquisite? – Now hear this, Eleanor? – do you remember this?” Finally, annoyed at her sister’s faint assents, she exclaimed, “Do for once, Eleanor, shut up your Bible, and listen to me. What is the use of this duty – reading? Is that a tear?” A tear was glistening on the Bible’s leaf. “Uncle Walter was quite right – you and I have different modes of manifesting our sensibilities. But now, dear saint, do listen to me. Do you believe that Mr Esterly has the least notion how much he is admired?”

“He should have, Grace. There is a perfect sirocco of flattery blowing upon him from every quarter.”

“And you have taken a moral alarm. You are afraid these bad airs will cloud his fair soul? I have more faith in him. I believe that soul is surrounded by a disinfecting atmosphere of its own.”

“Ah, Grace! ‘Lead us not into temptation.’”

“Yes, I know. But, Eleanor, do you think that Mr Esterly suspects how much I admire his eloquence?”

“He should – if he sees your face in church, he may read your admiration.”

“Perhaps, Eleanor, you fancy I hold up my face to show it to him?”

Eleanor protested she thought no such thing.

“On my word, I do not,” continued Grace, vehemently. “It is involuntary. I can not droop my head as you do, so like the Naples Psyche – why look hurt, Eleanor? I do not mean in imitation of that divine heathen, but truly you do look like her, as if you were revolving all serious things in heaven and earth. I asked our rector the other day if he did not perceive a certain resemblance to that most spiritual of all human forms.”

“Grace!”

“Don’t be alarmed. He was not at all struck by my sisterly conceit.”

“What reply did he make?”

“Ah, you can be curious, sweet saint! Why, he turned off to the window, and said – I can’t recall quite what he did say – I know he confessed the resemblance; but let that pass. Now, mine Eleanor – I am going to open my heart to you!”

“Not now, not now, Grace,” said her sister hurriedly, “it’s past eleven; we must go to bed.”

“If the house were on fire, I believe you would go to bed at eleven, Eleanor,” replied Grace, impatiently.

Both sisters proceeded to their disrobing, but when Eleanor laid her head on her pillow, Grace sat down on the bedside, her dark tresses streaming over her nightdress, and her eyes lighted with the excited and brilliant color of her cheek, and said eagerly, “Eleanor,” and then bending her head, she kissed her sister’s cold cheek, and added in a lower tone of her sweet, rich voice, “Eleanor, my counselor and guide, you must hear me now!”

“Speak on, Grace,” replied Eleanor, turning her head away from her sister.

“Yes, I will speak, and you must listen, Eleanor.”

“I hear every syllable,” replied her sister, in a tremulous voice.

“If I have hurt your feelings, forgive me, Eleanor, but you know when one’s wide awake with one’s feelings, one can’t understand how one’s sister can be sleepy though it be past eleven. I want you to make the soundings of my heart. You shall explore its depths and shallows – take the plummet and line of your better experience, better wisdom, better everything, and be my pilot. Now then – you know that I admire our rector beyond all bounds.”

“And so love him, Grace?” asked Eleanor, in an earnest voice.

“No, not in that wise – nor – Eleanor, I am bound to the whole truth to you, for ‘perfection bears with imperfection’ – do I love him so much but that I am pleased with Horace Copley’s attentions – eager for them – delighted when he dances with me instead of with Anne.”

“My dear sister! how can that be?”

“It is even so. I knew you would be shocked, and still more shocked when I confess that I would give a great deal to know how much Copley cares for me.”

“Then surely you do not love Mr Esterly?”

“But I like him excessively. One would be so sure of going on to like him more and more, till liking ripened to loving, Eleanor; and since reading Aunt Sarah’s letters, I dread the uncertainties of married life, and feel like running for any safe harbor. A fate has pursued all of our name – no, certainly, I do not love the rector as I expected to love.”

She paused, rose from the bed, stood for a moment meditating, and then said:

“I will finish, though I fall to zero in your opinion. I have sometimes thought of late, that if – I am ashamed of my meanness – if Archibald Lisle were less reserved, and more a man of the world, more polished – what strange creatures we are – it would be easier to love him than the rector; – he is intrinsically a gentleman, and might come round. At times he has a charming self-forgetfulness; his eye is so bewitching, it laughs, it speaks, and in spite of his shrinking bashful sensitiveness, I have seen him look regally down on Copley.”

“My dear sister, you do not love Mr Esterly?”

“No; I see I do not; but on the whole I prefer him, and if it were not that the life of a clergyman’s wife is so dull, that I should have to give up the theater and – Oh, Eleanor! the opera, and take part in Sunday Schools, and sewing circles, and hear of vestry meetings, and all that sort of thing – I do think the rector is so good, and charming, so rich in gifts for this world and graces for heaven, that I should not dare refuse him.”

“Has he asked you, Grace?” said Eleanor, faintly.

“Asked me? no; not in so many words; but how strange of you, Eleanor, as if the thing were questionable. Is he not here every day or evening? does he not sit by me, and listen to my playing for hours? Why, three evenings last week, when you were out late on that Orphan Asylum business, he was still here when you came home. We had read half Petrarch. Wherever I go, I am teased about him. I am sure Copley is jealous of him. Everyone sees but you, Eleanor.”

“I shall be no longer blind, Grace. Come to bed, my dear child.”

“No, I will not, till you have given me your counsel – your opinion at least.”

“Then,” Eleanor replied, in a faltering voice, “my opinion is, that your feelings, when quickened by his, will force a decision in his favor. Good night – God direct you.”

“Good night, dear Eleanor,” said Grace, bending over her sister to kiss her. “Tears on your cheek, Eleanor! you frighten me; you are so dreadfully solemn about this matter.”

Another month passed away. It is to be hoped that the rector was as faithful to his clerical duties as to his lay devotions at the Herbert’s. Grace suffered herself to flow on with the current, secure, with Eleanor’s authority, in awaiting the decision of her feelings when the time came.

“I wish,” she said to her sister, “that the rector were more lover-like. If he were, I believe the current of my being would set to him. This morning – you know, Eleanor, I tell you everything, and turn my heart inside out to you – this morning, as I was coming into the door, I dropped my bracelet; as I turned for it, he was pressing it to his lips. To be sure this was a common gallantry, but very uncommon with him. Now, Horace Copley, if I drop my handkerchief, kisses it before returning it; or if a leaf, he puts it in his bosom, and his bosom has its windows shut, and blinds closed. Oh, Eleanor, you think me foolish and vain – I am! I am!”

“Which of your bracelets was it, Grace?”

“What signifies that? Why, it was the one you gave me at Christmas, not the coral one, but that with your hair; you remember how he admired the pearl setting!”

It was soon after this that the Herbert family awakened to the fact that Eleanor was becoming thin, and pale, and nervous, not irritable, but discomposed by trifles, and tearful when no one could guess the cause. Mrs Herbert prescribed and administered her favorite remedy, camomile, but even that panacea failed. She urged change of air, but Uncle Walter, to whom she appealed to second her, did not seem at all alarmed by the “perturbations” in this serene planet. However, a providential invitation – so styled by Mrs Herbert – came from Cuba to Eleanor, and she, with a sudden decision that surprised her family, and alarmed her sister, resolved to sail in the steamer on the following Monday.

“Why, did not you tell me, Mrs Herbert?” said Grace, impetuously, “that you thought my sister so ill? Why did I not see it myself?”

“My dear,” replied Mrs Herbert in her calmest manner, “you were pre-occupied. Young ladies,” she added, with a smile, “are often one-idea’d!”

Nothing in the world provoked Grace so much as her stepmother’s cold truisms. A biting reply rose to her lips, but it was repressed by the conviction that she deserved the pain Mrs Herbert inflicted. Her eyes filled with tears – “I shall go to Cuba with my sister,” she said, in a much softened voice. This was an unexpected move, and it threw Mrs Herbert’s whole game into confusion.

“My dear Grace!” she exclaimed, “you are too much alarmed. There is no danger in Eleanor’s case. The constitution, as medical men say, is not consolidated before five-and-twenty; ‘fluctuations are continually occurring.’”

“Nonsense, Mrs Herbert! I beg your pardon, ma’am, but Eleanor is not one of those flimsy things that rise and fall with the barometer. She is a dear, sound, little woman – body and mind. She is seriously ill – I shall go.”

“Allow me to say, Grace, you are too apt to obey your impulses. At this moment you think only of Eleanor – to-morrow you will remember another, and may – too late, regret having gone away at a crisis in your life. At least,” she added, sure into which scale Eleanor would throw her influence, “consult your sister.”

Grace paused for a moment, struck with the fact that the rector weighed lightly in the balance against her sister, and then said, “Consult my sister! to what purpose? She would never consent to my making a possible sacrifice for her. No, Mrs Herbert – I shall go!”

“What a headstrong girl!” thought Mrs Herbert, as Grace left her. “Just on the brink of this engagement – it would have been such a relief! Well, I am more and more convinced that there is uncertainty in this transitory world!”

Eleanor Herbert did the work of charity, not as a servant, working for hire, but as a child, serving with filial love. She instructed the ignorant without esteeming it an act of piety any more than she would have called the conducting of a friend’s child through the perils of a crowded street, an act of friendship. “She gave with simplicity” knowledge, time, affection – all she had to give. She was very unlike those fashionable ladies, who throw idle dissipations and all manner of frivolities into one scale, and churchgoing, and charity subscriptions, and Sunday School keeping into the other, and fancy they have fairly adjusted the scales between God and Mammon. Eleanor was in this world, but not of it.

Sunday intervened, and found Eleanor at her post at her Sunday School. Weak as she was, she went through the usual routine of instruction to the little commoners she had gathered from the obscure lanes and dens of the city. When her task was done, and she told them she was to be absent from them; they eagerly gathered round her and received each rebuke, an admonition, or a commendation, and all a word of tender interest. The sweet accents of Eleanor’s gentle voice, the grace and refinement of her manner were not lost upon those poor little outcasts and outlaws. Accustomed to harsh tones, and bred amid every species of vulgarity, a presence like hers, has to them, in addition to its intrinsic power, the charm of surprise and novelty; the spiritual beauty is visible and tangible. While her little Celts were demonstrating the quality of their vehement spirits, the rector, in passing to his duty in the school, paused behind her. One tall stout girl dropped on her knees, as if she were in adoration before the Virgin mother, and literally kissed the hem of Eleanor’s garment. Half a dozen pressed their lips to her pale hands, and one, the least of all, and with not the cleanest of faces, sidled up to her and said fondly: “It’s your own lips, teacher, I’m after wanting to feel!” Eleanor kissed her on both cheeks, while her mates laughed, wondering at her audacity, – the rector, smiling, passed on.

When the school was dismissed, he joined her in the vestibule, and asked leave to attend her, in the carriage, to her home. “How charmingly your little vagrants have got on,” he said. “I saw your leave-taking. With such furnaces as their hearts are, and at this plastic period of their lives, what may not such teachers as you are, Eleanor, do for them – but did I hear you aright? are you going away?”

“Yes.”

“And so suddenly! But not for long, Eleanor?”

“For some months.”

“Months!” There was a real tragedy in his tone. He had never before, in all their intimacy, called her “Eleanor.” “What takes you away so suddenly?”

“A pressing invitation,” she replied. She was fluttered by his manner, and, averting her head, she added, “and I am not well.”

“But surely,” he rejoined, “not ill enough to require a voyage – an absence of months! Have you taken medical advice?” Eleanor shook her head. “You will not go alone! Your sister must go with you?”

“My sister!” exclaimed Eleanor, and involuntarily raised her eyes to his. There was a revelation in his which she thus interpreted: What a struggle that kind suggestion cost him! “No,” she replied, “Grace can not leave New York now – I must go alone.” Both parties were silent for the short distance to Mrs Herbert’s door. When they were in the drawing room, Eleanor sank down, really unable to stand, on the cushioned chair Mr Esterly drew to the fire for her. He pressed her cold, almost lifeless hand to his lips. That moment when a man, really in love, is about to make his confession, and stake all upon it, is the humblest, the most self-distrusting of his life. And besides the timidity natural to this crisis, Esterly had not the ordinary self-complacency that is mail of proof to most men. “I have no right to interfere with your arrangements, Eleanor,” he said, his voice faltering. “If I dared to hope you had any feeling answering to mine – if my love for you –”

Eleanor started, and looked up with surprise and enquiry. “Love!” she repeated, in a tone of astonishment, “for me?”

“Yes, dearest Eleanor, the profoundest, tenderest love.”

Eleanor sunk back, and covered her face with her handkerchief, while she suffered Esterly to retain her hand, and he felt (and the consciousness thrilled his whole being) the delicate pressure that returned the grasp of his. He told her, in a few fervid sentences, the “history and mystery” of his love – how it came, and how it grew, and how it had of late been repressed and abated of hope by her growing reserve, and how he had thought it possible that through her frank sister he might win her. Suddenly he felt Eleanor’s hand become nerveless, he heard a low sigh, her handkerchief dropped, and he saw that she was colorless as marble, and as senseless. He rang the bell, and so violently that Mrs Herbert, Grace, Anne Carlton, the servants, rushed in at once, and Walter Herbert, just coming through the hall door, was there too. “She is dead!” shrieked Grace. Uncle Walter laid her on a sofa. Esterly dropped on his knees beside her, and laid his hand on her heart. “She is not dead!” he said, in a voice choked with emotion. Water, eau de cologne, hartshorn, all the restoratives at hand, were produced. Grace, half frantic between sudden terror and sudden joy, was dashing all on at once. Mrs Herbert, always imperturbable, brought order out of confusion, but it was a long time (to Grace it seemed an eternity) before the hue of life returned to Eleanor’s cheek. When it did, Esterly, who had never once turned his eyes from her, uttered a fervent “Thank God!”

Uncle Walter had read the riddle aright. “Come away, Esterly,” he said, “you and I are not wanted here – at present.”

“It does not answer,” said Mrs Herbert, “for anyone to undertake more than they can do.” If Mrs Herbert were exploded from the crater of a volcano, as Grace once said of her, her first utterance would have been a flat truism. “Now, my dear Eleanor,” she continued, “I trust you will not take up those vagrants again, when you come back from Cuba. I am sure no one has more feeling for the poor than I have; but really such work should be left to people of strong nerves, which neither you nor I possess.”

“So I think, mamma,” said Miss Anne; “to people that are used to it. Dear me, Eleanor, how frightened I was! Do you know I thought Mr Esterly had been sent for, because you were dying. Oh, Grace, did not I look pale?”

Grace, without listening to Miss Anne’s silly egotisms, was supporting Eleanor to their own apartment. There, Eleanor felt something like self-reproach while she was receiving Grace’s tender ministrations.

Grace, entirely unsuspecting, was exclaiming at due intervals, “I am glad Frank Esterly sees now how ill you are. I suppose you broke down at church, and that was why he came home with you. I shall never work for him as you have done! If he had one spark of discernment, he would prefer you to me – he does not comprehend you – how should he, you are so reserved lately? You used not to be so, Eleanor. How glad I am that you are going to Cuba! and I will tell you now, that you are so much better, I am going with you! Don’t make des grands yeux at me,” she continued, as she saw her sister’s flush of gratitude and love; “it is all arranged, Eleanor!”

Eleanor drew her sister down, and kissed her. “Grace,” she said, “I have something far more generous to ask of you, than going to Cuba with me; but leave me now, for a while, till I am rested, and can summon resolution to tell you what it is.” When Eleanor was left to herself, a strong current of happiness set out from her heart, and swept away all the disquietudes that had perturbed that serene region. When, after a refreshing sleep, she awoke, Grace was sitting on her bedside, fondly watching her. “Grace,” she said, looking up with a very serious smile, “I hardly know whether my waking thoughts are dreams, or my dreams realities. I am very happy, but I am sure I could not be so, if I thought I had done you a wrong, or crossed you in any way.” She paused. Grace gazed, as if a faint light were dawning. “I was myself deceived,” continued Eleanor, “surprised more than I can tell you, when, this morning –”

“‘Deceived!’ ‘surprised!’” exclaimed Grace, springing away from her sister; “I see – I see it all,” she said, rushing up and down the room, while the clouds of frail humanity shadowed her fine face. But the sun broke through, and throwing her arms around her sister, half laughing, and half crying, she said, “it is all right and fitting, Eleanor. We have had a pretty game of blindfold between us. Your eyes bandaged with your modesty, mine with my vanity. Oh, what a fool! what a giddy, presumptuous fool I have been! How patient you were with me! How could I imagine that Frank Esterly was my lover, when you were made for him, and his parish, Eleanor? Now, I see plainly that he always treated me as a brother should treat a dear sister. I thank him for that. Well, my silly vanity is punished, but my woman’s pride is safe. I never loved him – you know that.”

“Yes, and that conviction has given me inexpressible comfort this evening, Grace.”

“Comfort! what a word to use at this culminating point of your life. Sisters are different, as our sententious stepmother would remark.” After a moment’s consideration, she added, “I understand it all now. It was sisterly love I was trying to fuse into something more fervent. Truly, Eleanor, I like the brother better than the lover.”

“Rest there, Grace, in that blessed conclusion, and listen to me for a moment. I must seem to you, and to others not quite as kind observers as you are, a lovesick girl. But it was not a hopeless affection for Frank Esterly that wore me away to this pale shadow of myself, but my contrition for my insensibility to the blessings of my life, for my repining, because one was denied me – for my jealousy of my dear sweet sister – for the jealousy and envy that corroded and ate away every good purpose, and holy resolution. I combated, but grew weaker, and not stronger, from day to day. The only extenuation I could find for myself was in the conviction, that you did not love Frank Esterly, and were rushing into a difficult service to which you had no call.”

“I was, Eleanor; you were right, as you are right in everything, but your conscientious self-tormenting, and that, I suppose, only makes you the truer saint. Now, let me go and tell dear Uncle Walter.”

Eleanor assenting, Grace went, but to her extreme disappointment, he expressed no surprise, but merely bowed his head with a pleased and provoking affirmation “I know – I know.”

“But you did not know, Uncle Walter, you did not suspect?”

“Suspect! No, child, I was sure Eleanor was predestined to this holy calling. Frank Esterly saw on her serene brow the Turkish sentence of Fate, ‘It is written,’ and he accepted his destiny. He is a wise and happy man – Frank. He has built his house upon a rock, and now, if the floods come, and the rain descends, and the winds blow, the house will not fall – it is founded on a rock.”

“Yes, for the rock of Gibraltar is not more stable than our little Eleanor. But, uncle, do you know that all this while that Frank Esterly has been haunting our house, I never dreamed of this, and – never tell, Uncle Walter – I even fancied, vain goose that I was, that he was in love with me.”

“I knew that, too, my child.”

“Uncle Walter! – and did not tell me – let me blindly run my head against a post.”

“I knew there would be no head or heartbreaking – you would dodge the post. You are destined to many a hair-breadth ’scape, Grace, but our mistakes and follies are our best teachers, our ‘sternest, and our best,’ if we early enough take the lesson, and lay it to heart – experience can scarcely be called a ‘stern-light’ to a girl just eighteen.” Walter Herbert sighed deeply, and his face took one of those expressions of sad memories, that often alternated with its benign playfulness. Grace’s thoughts reverted to the intimations of his life in the green morocco trunk. Both were silent.

Chapter 7

“He little knew

The power of magic was no fable.”

The closest friendship of Lisle’s youth was with Arthur Clifford, his classmate. This young man died in the midst of his college career, leaving to his contemporary students a memory to be loved and honored to the end of their lives; and leaving his mother’s friendship to Archibald, a richer legacy than much fine gold. The subjoined extracts are from a letter to this lady, written, as it appears, soon after Eleanor’s marriage.

Miss Alice requests me, you say, to describe my friend Esterly’s wedding. Alas! I have no story to tell; business intervened, and took me out of town, and thus saved all parties from my blundering performance of the office of bridegroom.”

Love and Reason, antagonisms in the common courts of love, have shaken hands over this union of my friends. God hath joined them together, and whatever be the friction of life, their bonds will grow stronger.”

Once for all, my dear friend, I entreat you to dismiss certain ‘pleasant fancies,’ as you truly call them. Love and Reason can have no conjunction there. That ‘bright particular star’ does not shine for me, a country-bred lad, out of sorts with the uses of the fine world. Your feminine allusion to Endymion and the moon will not do. That myth is no type for this prosaic day of ours. The radiant flood of feminine majesty falls only on high places. I seldom see Miss H., and have no reason to believe that she remembers my existence, in the intervals of our meeting.”

“You ask me about my business concerns: they are prospering. My senior partner’s malady proving of an incurable nature, he has manfully retired at once, and so commended me to his clients, that I retain a considerable proportion of the business of the office. This, as my good father would say, is providential. My young brothers need my aid; were I alone concerned I could await patiently the sure results of industry in my profession. As it is, I take the accidents of fortune greedily and gratefully. Should you find them tempting me out of my modesty, or my simple habits, save me, dear friend, by your timely warning. With my love and a kiss to dear little Alice

yours faithfully,

A. L.

P.S. Don’t, Miss Alice, turn on me the disdainful shoulder of a Miss in her teens. The Alice of my memory is a Hebe girl of ten, with lips bright and sweet as an opening carnation, frankly upturned to meet mine

A keen-scented reader will perceive that Archibald Lisle did not tell the whole truth to his friend. He coolly said what he believed the “intervals of their meeting were to Miss Herbert.” He did not even hint at what they were to him.

His life had been too full of earnest work for those fancies that flit over the youth of most men, as ephemeral as the insect life of a summer’s day. Lisle, like other men, had his ideal – ideals vary! But he was not like other men, who, being as foolish, if not as mad as Don Quixote, shape the actual to the ideal, and, while Puck’s unction lasts, are happy in the illusion. Lisle’s ideal was verified in the beauty (an element in all young men’s ideals) the bright intelligence, the loftiness, the unworldliness, and the fearless sincerity of Grace. Still it had but faintly shadowed the indefinable charm that spellbound him. Her image haunted him, filled his world, banishing even himself from it. It followed him to the thoroughfares of business, so that often briefs, depositions, and all documents under the “lawyer’s barbarous pen,” were dim to his incorporate sense. If he read an exciting poem, if he saw a picture that charmed him, his first thought was, “what would she think of it?” In short, her vitality was infused into whatever “touched his soul to finest issues.” Beware, Archibald Lisle! Rebuke hope as you will! heap on the ashes of your reserve as you may, the fire covered and hidden, is becoming more intense, the danger more imminent!

Most women are the first to detect the love they inspire. Grace did not in this case. Perhaps her perceptions were dulled by the confident and self-complacent demonstration of most of her admirers, or were restrained by the rebuke to her vanity in her sister’s affair. She might have been misled by her Uncle Walter’s frequent reiterations that he could not get Lisle to the house. “The scamp knows I love him,” he said, “and Mrs Herbert, at my request, has been civil to him, but he will not come to us. Why the deuce, Grace, don’t you beam on him, for my sake?”

“I have done my best, Uncle Walter, both for your sake and my own; for a clever man is a rare bird in our precincts. Did I not heartily concur in Frank’s wish that Mr Lisle should be his groomsman, and he consented; and we rehearsed the performance of our joint office; and on the very morning of the wedding came a note, saying that business compelled him to leave town – cool, I thought!”

Much involuntary injustice is done in this world, in small as well as great matters. The “business” to which there was a mere allusion in Lisle’s letter to Mrs Clifford was a most inopportune journey to a distant part of New England, where Mrs Clifford’s only son was placed at an academy. He had written to Lisle – “For heaven’s sake, dear Archy, come here without delay; I am in trouble – nothing but a boy’s scrape, as you will see, but if dear mother knows it, she will think it as bad as murder. You can set all right with the master in half an hour, and she need never break her heart over it.”

Lisle’s interposition availed, and it was characteristic of him to say nothing of it to Mrs Clifford, and not to hint at what cost of sweet expectations he had sacrificed his proximity to Grace, at her sister’s wedding.

Archibald Lisle was reserved, perhaps to a fault. Certainly he was in strong contrast to our self-complacent young ladies and gentlemen who pour out their personalities to every willing and unwilling ear; emulating in their narrow orbit the spontaneous confidence of certain popular writers, who make a “clean breast” of it to the reading public, and write down and print every emotion and every throb of passion as unreservedly as if talking to their bosom friend, and as coolly as they would register the rise and fall of the mercury.

The accidents of life had confirmed the reserve which was in the very fibre of Lisle’s character. The mother is the natural confident of the child. His died in his early youth, and though her love for him was immeasurable, she was, like our New England women who are not softened and developed by society, undemonstrative; and his father, a plain, sensible working man, had little beyond his probity and kind-heartedness, that answered to his son’s gifted nature. He married again, promptly, after the death of Archibald’s mother; a second brood followed, but were not permitted to interfere with his “first companion’s” dying injunction, that her son should be educated (sent to college) cost what it might. Mistress Lisle had never propounded the rights or wrongs of women – perhaps she had never heard of them – but living or dead her behests were obeyed by her meek husband, who devoted his spare gains to advantages – that all-comprehending Yankee term – for her son. His pursuits and associations raised him above the home sphere, and threw him into conscious isolation. He was too generous to seek the society that would widen the distance between him and his father’s intimates, the mechanics and farmers of a rural district. We are all free and equal – all republicans – all democrats. There are no recognized gradations of rank; but they are felt and measured with microscopic accuracy. Where are they unknown, except, as Sir Walter said, among the Hottentots?

The cravings for intimacy and affection are not dulled, but made more intense by a reserved nature. Archibald’s were appeased by Arthur Clifford’s friendship. He was deprived of this by his friend’s early death, and he came to our great city to struggle alone, without fellowship or sympathy. “Every Englishman is an island,” says Emerson. Lisle was a fortified island; but the hour and the woman came, and before the magic of a correspondent nature, the tide swept in and swept out; still the barriers that nature had set, and habit maintained, stood, and not a human being knew he loved Grace Herbert – not Mrs Clifford, his most confidential correspondent – not Uncle Walter, who, in his own genial nature had an open “sessame” to every other chamber of Archibald’s heart. No one suspected it – except one poor little obscure girl! A loving woman has a subtlety of perception almost preternatural.

Life went on. Lisle’s summer, with the exception of a short visit to his father, was spent in heated court rooms and in his office in Wall Street. His sphere scarcely touched Grace Herbert’s, but from that illuminated world he had some flashes of intelligence through Walter Herbert, whose frequent pleasure it was to drop in upon his younger friend. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,” and he seldom came and went without some mention of Grace.

“Grace,” he said, “has taken to studying the old English poets. I studied them, too, when I was a college lad, and loved them, and love them yet better than our befogged, transcendental cotemporaries; it needs a nautical eye to see your way through them. We always love best what we read in our youth. You never heard Grace read, Lisle? The poets might turn out of heaven to hear her read their verses. Her voice is the most delicious sound I ever heard. Ah, Lisle, I come to you for comfort. Our house is desolate. My child has gone off to Saratoga, with Mrs Herbert and her daughter – my good and my evil spirits gone together! The girls are making what the gentry there call ‘a sensation.’ Anne is in her right niche, ‘made to order’ for a watering place; but poor Grace frets in the harness. Her rich Philadelphia suitor has followed her there. He’ll not take ‘No,’ thrice said, for an answer.”

The summer passed, and autumn came.

“There’s a rare young Englishman in town,” said Uncle Walter; “modest, not shy.”

“The Honorable Melbourne Grey?”

“The same. Do you know him?”

“Yes, I met him at our club, and had the pleasure of showing him our courts.”

“Ah! I see him in another sort of court. A secret, Archy – you are my safety valve. I think he is on his knees to Grace. I trust in heaven she’ll let him stay there. I can’t lose my child; and, though he’s a fine fellow, with family and fortune, and all that, and all that, yet I don’t fancy Grace going where she would be received upon sufferance – looked down upon as an American, and have to follow into dinner at the tail of trumpery Lady This and Lady That. No, my Grace is a queen in her own right.” This time Mr Herbert left poor Lisle with a bitter cud to chew.

But in a few days more he came into the inner office with his sunniest aspect. “The Honorable Grey has gone,” he said, “‘with a flea in his ear.’ I don’t quite see into Grace – women are tickle tackle. I am afraid there are breakers ahead. I hate the sight of Horace Copley!”

Months followed, marked by a few incidents, soon forgotten by Grace, but making epochs in Lisle’s life. He had been taking a sporting stroll on Long Island, and brought home with him the sweetest things of our spring woodlands, the creeping arbutus, early violets, and anemones. He sent them to Miss Herbert, and calling to see her the next evening, she naturally adverted to his “lovely spring flowers.” He asked her if she had observed among the blue violets a few white ones, of a species new to him, and fragrant. She had not, and ringing the bell, directed John to bring down a bouquet from her library table. John returned with a bouquet of exotics, marketable flowers! “O! not that, John,” exclaimed Grace; “I told you my library table.”

“Why, so you did, Miss Grace; but I kind of did not realize, and thought it was the bouquet Mr Copley sent on Thursday, and was carried up to your own room.”

He left Grace blushing at certain natural inferences from his excuse, and returned with poor Archy’s flowers, drooping and hanging their pretty heads, it would seem in silent sympathy with his sinking heart.

“Oh! Mr Lisle,” exclaimed Grace, “I am ashamed! I forgot to put water in the vase. You may carry them away, John – we can’t tell the white violets from the blue.”

“Copley’s flowers were sent on Thursday,” thought Lisle, “and are as fresh now as then; mine, plucked yesterday, are dead!”

Sterile months passed away, and one happy evening came. Lisle passed it alone with Grace and her uncle. It lighted up weeks of life for him. “Uncle Walter” was supremely happy – Grace electrifying. There was not a disagreement, a discordant note. The last new books were spoken of – Tennyson’s last poem. Lisle made a remark upon it that particularly struck and pleased Grace. She repeatedly adverted to it in the course of the evening. Not two months after, in a society where they met, Grace said, quoting his remark, “Somebody, I can’t recall who, said so-and-so to me.”

Lisle had not forgotten a word she uttered that evening, nor a shade of her expression.

Chapter 8

“The eyes smiled, too;

But ’twas as if remembering they had wept,

And knowing they should some day weep again.”

In the attic room of a crowded tenement, in an obscure but decent quarter of our great city, sat a middle-aged man, working at the jeweler’s trade, ill provided with the means and appliances of his craft, but working ingeniously, and by fits, with almost supernatural rapidity and effect. One seeing him in these, his best hours, would have taken him for a patient and hopeful craftsman; but suddenly he would stop his work, throw back his head, make wild gestures, and turn his eyes, brighter than any gem he wrought, upon a young girl who sat on a low chair beside him, performing tasks he assigned her – now sorting precious stones, and then rubbing them by the hour, as if the pressure of her delicate fingers could polish their hard surfaces. She asked no questions – he had long ago put an end to all hope of relief from that childish instinct – but day after day, weary month after weary month, she did his wayward bidding with a gentle assiduity that sprang from a femininely submissive nature. The child, for child she still seemed, though in her sixteenth year, was most of all bewildered by her father’s fits of fondness, when he would snatch her to his bosom and pour showers of tears over her, and then sink for hours into a state of death-like apathy.

She had but a feeble comprehension of the singularity of her fate. She had been five years shut up in this attic with her monomaniac father, never leaving it excepting for a dismal walk in the twilight with him, covered with a double veil, and running to keep up with his long and hasty strides. No doubt the pair sometimes excited curiosity, even amid the egotistic crowd of our thronged city; but the natural conclusion was, that the child so cautiously veiled, so seemingly dragged along, was either blind or defaced. Blind! defaced! Never were eyes more perfect than Jessie Manning’s; perfect in their lustrous violet blue, long dark lashes, and all perfecting accessories. Her features were symmetrical, and of the most femininely delicate order of beauty. Her complexion gave no indication of the happy robustness of her English nativity; but it had the delicate American hue, so fondly cherished by our town and (shame to them!) country-bred girls, not like Jessie deprived of the benign agencies of nature by insane tyranny; a hue as fleeting as the bloom on the fruit, or the tint of the rose, and which is sure, at the first strain of life, to fade into a pale, sickly, parchment-like color. Happy and rare the native beauty that escapes this fearful and sudden transition.

We wonder that a lovely flower should bloom and die unseen; but we wonder more that the gift of beauty is as perilous as it is often useless – that gift which is visibly impressed with the perfecting touch of the Creator, which is the garment of paradise, the vestment of angels. Poor Jessie was an exception to the fact, that “if women be but young and fair, they have the gift to know it.” The little prisoner was as unconscious as a flower that blooms and dies in an unexplored prairie. She had one friend, Martha Young, a kind old maiden, who, with a superannuated father, lived on the floor under Manning; and one other friend, the dearest thing in life to her, her only companion and playfellow, the only living creature who seemed to understand her, and answer to her, who was blended with the memories of her childhood, happy in a mother’s presence and love. This creature, a loving little spaniel of the King Charles breed, was always at her side, sleeping or waking; to him, her “darling Beau,” she talked freely, laughed when he was tricksome, and – for nature will have an outlet – did her romping with him, when her father fell into the death-like sleeps that followed his feverish wakeful nights. Nature takes her dues with a stern hand.

It was during one of these blessed oblivions of Manning, and in the midst of a gambol with Beau, that the door was cautiously opened by Martha, who well knew how to interpret the noise over her head. The fairies’ visits were not more welcome to Cinderella, than Martha’s to her protégé. The appearance of that coarse-featured face, and grizzled head was sunshine to Jessie’s heart.

“I knew he was in one of his sleeps,” said Martha, nodding her head toward Manning, “and so I just run up to bring you some calves’-head jell Madam Copley sent to father; it’s healthy, dear – none of your boughten stuff, made out of nobody knows what. Madam Copley has the best of everything, and she is good to the poor, especially to father, that was brought up in her father’s house, and spent his well days, and strong days there, and people thinks the family ought to support him now, but I don’t; rich folks can’t do everything, and besides, I think – I hope I ain’t proud – that the bread I earn is sweeter, and somehow more nourishing to us both, than if rich folks gave it; but Jessie, dear, how I am running on.”

“I love to hear you, Miss Martha.”

“Bless you, poor little dear! that’s ’cause you are lonesome, and hear nobody else, for I never was anything to talk; I can do, pretty well, but my strength is rather a failing, and if it should give out before father dies!” Martha’s eyes filled with tears. “Well,” she continued, “I won’t borrow trouble, that’s a mistrusting o’ Providence.”

“Please sit down, Miss Martha,” said Jessie, tenderly laying her hand on the old woman’s arm, and drawing a chair toward her.

“Oh, no, little dearie, no, he might wake sudden, and then there’d be a –” row, she would have added, but Martha had old-fashioned notions of filial respect, obedience, etc., and she swallowed the “row,” and said, “a disturbance; poor man! I think he is a little out.”

“A little what, Miss Martha?” asked Jessie, and looked up eagerly, as if catching at the solution of a mystery.

“Oh, never mind, dearie! go on in your obedient, patient ways with him, and you’ll have your reward – remember the only commandment with promise.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Miss Martha.”

“Why, poor little dear, don’t you know your commandments?”

“No, I think I don’t know anything.”

“Then they are written in a ’raculous way on the table of your heart, as the ministers say, for I’m sure you keep them; but, Jessie, you know how to read?”

“Yes, I remember my mother used to say I could read as well as she could, when I was five years old, and I had lots of pretty books at home. I have none here.”

“But I often hear you reading?”

“Yes, in father’s books – to him – all day, sometimes, but I don’t understand them, and he don’t explain them, and I think he often does not hear them; only when I am very tired, and stop, he bids me go on.”

“Let me look at them,” said Miss Martha, and putting on her spectacles, she examined the title pages of half a dozen sceptical or atheistical books lying on the table; they were Greek to her, and, happily, on subjects quite beyond her horizon.

“They seem to be a kind o’ religious reading,” she said, “but I guess they are dry and odd;” in his way, she added, mentally. “Well, if he won’t dislike it, dearie, I can get you lots of tracts at Mrs Copley’s. She’s bountiful of tracts. But I must not stay; and, oh, dear, how forgetful I am growing! here’s this rose that I have been watching, and nursing for you two weeks, and now it is not fully out. I had like to have carried it away.”

“I am so glad you did not; thank you, Miss Martha. Is not Miss Martha kind, Beau?”

“La, me! how he wags his tail, as if he sensed every word you speak.”

“He does, Miss Martha, if I look at him when I speak, or just call his name.” Happy faith, Jessie.

“Poor little doggy! I wonder if I can find something for you” said old Martha, and rummaging to the lowest depths of an almost fathomless pocket, she drew out a cake. “There you are!” she said, giving it to Jessie for her pet. “I somehow almost always providentially find a trifle in my pocket, just when it’s wanted. I bought that, yesterday, of the poor old soul that sits at the corner. She had sot all day out in the cold fog. She thanked me for the bare penny I spent on her, and now, you are thanking me again – a penny goes a great ways. I should not have been so lucky as to have that penny, only a lady took five pence off my work, for it not being done as well as usual. My eyes is a failing,” continued Martha, with a deep sigh, “that’s a fact! When I sit alone, Jessie, a sewing, and a sewing, and a moralizing, I think to myself, Poor folks are favored about some things. If we do a kindness, or give ever so little, it’s like falling dew, it don’t make no noise, but it’s nourishing, and your rich Pharisees may come down with gold in showers, and they kind o’ roll off, and leave a scar, or a barren spot. But all rich folks aren’t Pharisees, Jessie. I know them that’s like the early and latter rain, and the clear shining of the sun after it.”

Jessie probably understood old Martha, in spite of her somewhat parabolical style, for nestling close to her, and patting Beau, who was eating the cake by crumbs from her white dimpled hand – a neat savory little dish – she said, “Yes, Miss Martha, it’s so pleasant when you come into our room, and Beau and I love you; don’t we, Beau?” Beau replied with a conclusive wag, and Martha departed, inhaling her own “dews.”

Every creature who lives a true life, belongs to the cloud of heavenly witnesses. Among these, we claim to enroll Martha Young, for she was an actuality – an honest reality in a world of shams and shadows. She was an “old maid,” and lived and died without the bribes and recompenses with which Providence has seen fit to strew the beaten road of matrimony. Martha had the pleasing consciousness that her single life was her choice, for though she had never, even in her youth, charmed the outward eye, she had been twice sought in marriage by thriving tradesmen, worldly-wise widowers. Martha shook her head, and said, she “did not feel like leaving the old folks.” Both parents were then living, and both mainly dependent on her toils for their livelihood, and wholly dependent on her presence for their happiness. So she toiled on; and being a skilled sempstress, and having rich employers, and being in her own person a stern economist, she kept, as she said, “the springs and hinges oiled,” and life glided smoothly. Martha was as happy in her place – and for the same reason – as the Roman emperor, whose day was never without its good deed. She was eyes to the blind, and crutches to the lame, and she watched with the poor sick, who felt her cheery presence like the letting in of fresh air and sunshine. But to Martha, as to most of us, came the time when “the windows were darkened,” when her eyes began to grow dim, and her over-tasked hands to tremble. “I don’t look for’ard,” was her favorite declaration; “I’m in good hands, and I ain’t afeard.” It was simply said, but it expressed a Christian’s faith, full of peace.

“Well, Beau, darling,” said Jessie, after Miss Martha had retired, as she still sat feeding the little spaniel, and stroking his long silky ears, “you and I have it pleasant sometimes, don’t we? Wait a minute, pet, till I put my rose in water – there now. Oh, how sweet it is! If poor father would only notice it when he awakes. He used to love to give me flowers. I remember when he used to bring me such big bunches of moss-rose buds from Covent Garden market. Poor father!” she fixed her dove-like eyes tenderly upon him – “he is not like that now. What did he bring me away for? Mother was so sweet and pretty, and father was so merry and laughing. He never laughs now – never – never!” The brimming tears swelled over, and dropped on the little spaniel’s upturned face; he started. “Oh, never mind, pet, we can’t help crying sometimes, you know. Don’t you remember, Beau, father’s great shop, full of such handsome things! and that pretty sign with the silver candlesticks, ‘Manning, Leason, & Co.?’ You do – you wag your clever little tail! And don’t you remember that dreadful day he came home and said, ‘I’m ruined! I’m ruined! Leason is a –’ Oh he spoke such words, I can’t say them to you, Beau. And then, when he came home in the evening, and Mr Leason was there. That was the horrid time! He was angry with mother; and he said the maid told him Mr Leason kissed mother, and he struck him, and there was a fight – and mother caught me in her arms and ran up stairs, and you came after, yelping and barking. Oh it was so horrid! And the very next day it was that he crammed his clothes and mine into a trunk, and he took me off in a carriage; and you came running after, you dear good little fellow, through all London streets, and away to the place where a great ship was just sailing for New York; and you sprang into the little boat they rowed us to the ship in – but we did not think he would keep us away from poor mother forever, and forever – did we, Beau?” The poor child laid her head, as she had done a hundred times before, after a like soliloquy, on Beau’s neck and wept, while her little companion looked wistfully in her face, now and then uttering a low sympathetic yelp.

Jessie has indicated all that she knew of her sad story, and all that we know of it up to this time, except that Manning had continued in this wretched attic for five years, under the visitation of a hopeless monomania.

Chapter 9

“An arm of aid to the weak,

A friendly hand to the friendless –

Kind words so short to speak,

But whose echo is endless.

The world is wide – these things are small –

They may be nothing, but they may be all.”

“I come to you for advice, Mr Lisle,” said the agent of a rich landlord to Archibald. “One of our tenants is refractory. I think the man is half crazy; he has been punctual till last quarter day, but now he has thrown up work, and I doubt if he ever works again. I hate to be harsh with the old soul, especially as he has a slip of a girl – a modest, simple child she seems, though she may be sixteen; and what is worst of all in her case, she is a beauty, no mistake – and no friend to look to but him, except a purblind old maid, who has all she can do to make up her own rent. She lives in the same house; she is getting aged, and depends on her needle. It’s devilish hard work, this getting rents out of poor, hard-working people. I wish Mr Alton would try collecting his own rents one year; I think he would feel his own roof tree to stand firmer for a little easing to others. But my duty must be done.”

“Well, Macy, what is it you want of me?” asked Lisle, whose heart was not crushed out of him by two years’ devotion – since we last met him – to pressing and repressing the sordid claims of man.

“That’s just it. I want you to go with me to Mott Street and examine the man, and see if we had not best get a permit for him to go to the pauper insane asylum. He is a foreigner, and has no one to look to but the public.”

“And what is to become of his child?”

“She can get a place, probably – she may go to the almshouse in the mean while.”

“There should be room enough in the world for the poor thing,” thought Lisle, and silently deliberating how that room could be found, or made, he forthwith went with Macy to Mott Street. They reached the house tenanted by Manning, and paused on its broken step.

“Stop a minute, Mr Lisle,” said Macy, “and observe this tenement as we go into it, and you will not wonder that I detest my business. I have the renting of fifty such, more or less. Look at those crazy windows, rattling in this cold, gusty wind. It is enough to tear to pieces the nerves of the poor, half-mad man up stairs. There are five tenants, all decent, rent-paying people, in this house – not a comfort nor a convenience in it. The tenants are obliged to lug their water by the pail from the next hydrant, up a dark and steep staircase, the balustrade of which is liable to give way any day. Each apartment must have its wretched cooking stove, and there is only a common receptacle for the fuel of all, which leads to innumerable controversies among the decent tenants, and fights among the worst of them. The walls are dirty and ragged, and the floors are broken. Observe for yourself. I have mentioned the subject again and again to Mr Alton, but, Lord bless you! he does not think of it again – not he, in his palace with all the ‘modern improvements,’ heated with steam, lighted with gas, with dumb waiters and speaking pipes, and frescoed walls, and floors covered with imperial carpets – how should it ever occur to him that the same Maker who ‘fashioned him in the womb’ fashioned his poor tenants, and fashioned them with members as delicate as his? I wish I were Mr Alton, or any other rich landlord! You smile, Mr Lisle; you are thinking I would not do better than the rest of them?”

Lisle did smile rather sadly, as he replied, “There is a vast deal of self-delusion indicated in those common phrases, ‘if I were you,’ and ‘if I were he.’ But,” he added, looking in Macy’s kind, open face, “I am ashamed, if I implied distrust of you. There is a difference in landlords.”

“That’s a fact, Mr Lisle. I know some landlords who are building and repairing, with as much of an eye to the tenant’s advantage as their own; that’s what I call ‘live, and let live.’ But come, we must go ahead.”

They entered the house, mounted the first flight of stairs, passed Martha Young’s open door, and were groping their way round the dark passage to the second staircase, when they heard terrific shrieks in the attic, and a door, at the top of the second stairs, was thrown open, and Jessie, followed by her raving father, half sprang, half fell down the stairs. The crazy balustrade gave way at the pressure of her slight weight. Lisle caught her in his arms, and while Macy struggled with the madman, he carried her, half fainting and nearly unconscious, into Martha Young’s room, and then, without waiting to hear Martha’s broken explanations, and piteous lamentations over her, he returned to Macy’s aid.

Manning resisted for some time, with the preternatural strength of insanity; but it was soon exhausted, and he sunk to the floor, his incoherent raving ceased; he was breathless and impotent.

Lisle and Macy carried him to his room. Animation soon returned, with a senseless chattering, and tearless sobs. Martha was summoned. She said that for the last three months “he had been failing, getting more and more ‘out;’ and for the last month he had not done a stroke of work, and had not eaten enough to keep a fly alive; and, as to poor, dear little Jessie,” Martha said, “she has not eaten much more, only the crumbs, as you may say – she and Beau – that fell from my poor table. This morning Manning’s employer came to look after him, and seeing how it was, he took away all his work, and missing some stones, that the poor man may have dropped in the ashes, he took off his tools. Jessie says this seemed to wake her father up, and all of a sudden, when he heard your footsteps, a flash came over him, and the poor child, scared out of her wits, was flying to me, when, by the mercifulest Providence that ever happened, you saved her, sir, from falling to the very bottom floor of the house, and saved the beautifulest, best little soul that ever was sent into this hard going world, sir.”

Lisle mentally assented to the “beautifulest,” from the mere glance he had had of the lovely creature whom he had so strangely rescued from impending death. He offered to remain to guard Manning, while Macy went off to attend to the proper formalities and means of his removal to the asylum for insane paupers on Blackwell’s Island, there being now no further question as to the propriety of his bestowment there.

In the mean time he learned all that Martha could tell him of Jessie’s story, and that was no more than our readers already know, for though two years have passed since their first introduction to her, nothing could be more uniform, more eventless than her secluded life. The two years that had perfected her beauty, had brought poor Martha two years further into the decline and diminished light of waning life. Her father still lived, far gone into second childhood, and still patiently and most kindly provided for. “Here I stand,” she concluded her account of herself and her protégé to Lisle, “a failing creatur – on one side of me the poor mouldering trunk of a tree that I once leaned against, and on the other, this little blossoming vine that clings to poor old me, and has no other earthly thing to cling to.”

“But, my good friend,” said Lisle, who had learned from Martha her small and abating means of gaining her living, “she must have other support;” and after a few moments of consideration, he added, “Keep her with you, she can not have a kinder friend;” and taking out his purse, he continued, “I will pay you her board in advance for a month, and continue to pay it till she can be better provided for.”

A deep crimson spread over Martha’s pale old cheeks. “No – sir!” she said, with a pause between the words, and a decided emphasis on both; “put up your purse, sir. You look displeased; you need not, for I don’t mistrust you in the least, sir. I see written on your face – and anyone that can read anything can read it – the ‘further commandment’ and the best of all. But, sir, though I don’t know much that’s going on t’ other side of these four walls, yet I do know New York ain’t a district where a handsome young creatur can be boarded out by a young gentleman, without it being turned up against her some time or other.”

“My good woman, who is to know it but you and I?”

“That’s one too many,” answered Martha, with a smile. “My father, poor old man, for as childish as he is now, was wise in his day, and he used to say, if you want to spread news, tell it to one woman, and you give it wings. No use in talking, sir. I have been turning over a plan for this pretty little dear, for a long while, and when one door shuts, another opens, sir. I can get as much work as both her and I can do, and though my hands have come to a trembling, and my eyes are a failing, yet I can teach her; and when the time comes that must come, I can get her a sempstress’ place with one of my families. My old father can’t be spared much longer, but then I sha’n’t be left altogether destitute; I shall have something to love, and that will love me, and I suppose you know that to love and be loved is pretty much all there is to live for. There is poor little Jessie – you should see her with her dog – it’s her all – the world – sir!”

The poor old woman would have run on, for the sluices of her heart were opened, and she had found a willing and admiring listener, but she was interrupted by the slow timid opening of the door, and Jessie, white as a snowflake, and as noiseless, fluttered in.

She shuddered as she looked at her father, and dropping her head on Martha’s shoulder, she sighed out, “How is he now, Miss Martha?”

“Just as you see, dear, as one may say; nothing now – no thoughts – no feelings – shattered to bits – but cheer up, little dear! ‘the world is his who has patience.’ His poor dying body will be cared for; he is to be taken where he will be kindly looked after.”

Jessie raised her eyes bashfully to Lisle, and an effluence of consolation seemed to proceed from his benignant countenance. Her anxious look changed to the sweet peace of a child that is assured of all it wants.

“I have never seen anyone half so beautiful as this child-girl,” thought Lisle. “A’n’t my plan prudent?” asked Martha, smiling at Archibald’s involuntary gaze; and when he emphatically assented, she added, “but some things are set off by other things; the prettiest flower I ever did see, grew up and hung over the side of an old stump of a tree, covered with weather marks and black moss.” Poor Martha’s symbol of herself was as just as it was unwomanly; nor was there any groundswell of vanity, when Lisle said, with a smile, “I understand you.”

Before the new acquaintance parted that day, Archibald again proffered aid in a mode he thought unquestionable. “You will allow me, my friend,” he said to Martha, “to leave a small sum for your father?”

“No, sir. May be you know, sir, the pride and comfort of earning independent bread, and a sharing it with parents or the like; if you do, you’ll excuse me – that’s all my life, sir!” Archibald had known fully that pride and comfort; and the gifted and successful young lawyer felt a hearty sympathy with the poor old sempstress, and felt, as he returned his pursue to his pocket, that they had a community of imperishable goods.

“I hope you won’t think me proud, sir!” continued Martha. “May be I am, though, for pride has many faces, and one may well grow proud that has always the privilege of doing. Any way, sir, I am thankful to you, and if ever I need help, I’ll prove it by first asking it of you.”

The fancies of an idle young man might have been haunted by the beautiful image of Jessie Manning, but, as our readers know, Archibald Lisle was not an idle young man, and besides, his imagination was so pre-possessed by one image that all other impressions were trivial and transient. The passage in Mott Street was a mere parenthesis in his life, and was soon followed by such new and varied scenes that it passed into utter oblivion.

Lisle felt it to be a most unmanly folly to yield to a passion he believed hopeless, and he had, for the blank years in our narrative, abstained from every place where he should probably meet Grace Herbert. He devoted himself unremittingly to his business. He allowed himself no variety and no relaxation, and in the year following his visit to Mott Street, he met the necessary consequences of too severe application to business without any interval of recreation, or social refreshment. The mind can no more bear unvaried and unintermitted work, than the body can endure a strain on one set of muscles. Lisle became ill, and his illness took the perilous form of typhus fever. It was when he was at the worst, and when his two devoted friends, Walter Herbert and Esterly, had given strict orders to his nurse that no one, on any pretext, should be admitted to him, that poor old Martha Young, much aged since we last saw her, begged with sorrowful earnestness to be permitted to speak with Mr Lisle, and when denied and told of his fearful illness, she turned away murmuring, “It’s always just so! it never rains but it pours!”

Walter Herbert watched over Lisle with the vigilant tenderness of a parent. Dinners were forgone, his wine scarcely tasted, half his daily luxury of cigars forgotten; and when he had the unexpected happiness of seeing his friend fairly convalescing, he was, as he said, as light-hearted as a boy. “Upon my word, Archy,” he said, “I can hardly help telling the people in the street, whether I know them or not, that you are getting well!”

“That I am, is owing to you,” replied Lisle, in a tone that answered feebly to Uncle Walter’s exulting voice. “You, I believe, have saved my life.”

“Saved your life! Lord, man – I can’t even keep the blue devils away from you; the best of us are good for nothing at a sickbed – the women are the angels – the conjurers there. Why, Archy, if it were not for the pain, it would be a luxury for me to have a fit of the gout, for Eleanor to brew my possets, and Grace to caress, and amuse me. Lisle, you do not begin to know that girl. You have only seen her in the drawing room, where, for the matter of knowing the variety, the power, the sweetness, the divine nature of such a woman as Grace, why, you might as well look at her full-length picture.” Uncle Walter had no design in opening the floodgates of his heart. He had only obeyed an impulse, but he had opened them, and it was hard to shut them. However, he did shut them, saying, “I am talking too much – your color comes and goes like a nervous woman’s, while I am running on in this way. But you are gaining, my boy, and you will come round.”

But Lisle did not “come round;” and the food supplied to his fancies by Uncle Walter’s perpetual recurrence to his favorite, did not help him to “come round.” He was weak, and fretted like a child, by seeing an unattainable good placed in the most glowing lights perpetually before his eyes.

Week after week of tedious convalescence wore away, if that might be called convalescence, where there was neither vigor of body nor cheerfulness of mind – no approach to sound health. The doctor shook his head and said there was nothing for it but for his patient to give up his anxiety to return to his office – to abandon it altogether, and to go abroad for a year’s rest and recreation. His two friends seconded the suggestion, Walter Herbert vehemently – “There is no use, Archy,” he said, “in fighting the blue devils here. You must go abroad; there is reason in the old superstition, that this sort of gentry can’t cross the water.” Lisle answered with a faint smile. He thought it would be far easier to eject a legion of blue devils, than to drive out the one angel that had entered in, and taken possession of mind and heart. He assented, however, to the reasons of his friends, and deciding to run the fearful risk of suspending his business for a time, he arranged his affairs, and reluctantly diverted to his foreign expenses the earnings he had set apart to build his father a new house.

“Shall I bring Eleanor and Grace with me to the ship, tomorrow morning, Lisle, to bid you goodbye?” asked Uncle Walter.

“Oh, yes!” he answered; but after a moment’s pause added, in a faint tone, “No – no – you had best not. I am miserably weak, and shall need all my manhood to part from you and Esterly.” The next day he sailed for Havre.

Chapter 10

“Je n’ai ni bien, ni rang, ni gloire,

Mais j’ai beaucoup, beaucoup d’amour.”

Martha Young, with the common feeling that a lawyer’s pen has some latent magic, had sought Lisle, in the hope that a letter he should write might reach Jessie’s mother when all she had heretofore sent had failed. Turning, sorely disappointed, from his door, she next sought and gained admittance to Madam Copley, an old patron – patronage being the word she selected to express her employment of a capital sempstress, at moderate wages. But Martha was meekly grateful; and Madam Copley entered the patronage on the credit side of her spiritual records. Alas, for the Madam Copleys; another hand than theirs must balance their accounts.

If it be not a popular fallacy that mothers shape the morale of their childrens’ character, it may be well to give a more expanded introduction of the mother of Horace Copley. She was born of the privileged class – in our medieval national life, when we confessed such a class – and she had gone from youth to age erectly forward on a beaten road. As a young woman, she was observant of precepts, and proprieties. She was confirmed at the prescribed age, and married at the right time, combining her position and fortune with their exact equivalents. She had claimed the honors of wifehood, and motherhood, and when, in process of time, she became a widow, she exhibited the charities that the world holds to be the fitting garniture of that condition. Her affection for her son had the exacting, and intense quality of self-love. Even a mother’s love, that divine inspiration, is adulterated in a worldly spirit. But Madam Copley was a model woman, uniformly well spoken of in life, and destined, at her departure, to be illustrated by a long obituary, and an elaborate epitaph. The world is very kind to its formalists; but “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit, and in truth.”

When Martha Young entered Mrs Copley’s formidable presence, she was so paled and aged in the few months since her patron had seen her, that she did not recognize her till she had put on her spectacles. “Oh, it’s you, Martha Young, is it?” she said; “why, what’s the matter, woman? You may sit down.” The bend of the lady’s very stiff neck expressed her conscious condescension.

“Why, Madam Copley,” said Martha, sinking into a chair, “there is not so very much the matter of me. I am not so strong as I once was, and I am leg-weary; and I have just met with a little disappointment.” She wiped away tears. “Excuse me, madam, tears come without leave, now-a-days. I think it’s anxiety that’s pulled me down so.”

“You should not indulge anxiety, Martha; you are a professing Christian.”

“Oh, I know it’s sinful, ma’am. I have always found it true, that, sufficient to the day is the evil thereof – poor folks a most part do. Anxiety was never my besetment, so Satan takes me unawares. But, Madam Copley, when one has helpless age on one side, a depending, and more helpless youth t’other, and health is a failing, and strength pretty much gone, so that one lies down every night, afeard next day will be too much for them, why, Madam Copley, ’tis not very pleasant, you know, ma’am,”

Madam Copley did not know, and she had not those ready sympathies that are a substitute for experience. She looked at her watch, and rung the bell to order her carriage. “I have no more time to spare, Martha,” she said; “you know I never fail at morning prayers during Lent. My housekeeper will give you a bundle of work, and here is a dollar for you.”

“Oh, it is not that I am after, Madam Copley; thank God I have not come to beggary, though I am every day a looking for it.”

“What is it then you want? tell me quickly, Martha.” Martha began rather confusedly far back in Jessie’s story. Madam Copley interrupted her. “My good woman,” she said, “I have no time to hear any romantic story about a pretty girl; they go for nothing with me, you know. I am connected with so many benevolent societies, that I am quite used to them, and tired of them. It’s my duty I do, independent of all circumstances,” and the lady bridled up her head in conscious Roman virtue. “There’s the carriage – despatch, Martha, and tell me what you want.” Martha, eager to gain her point, was frightened into directness and brevity. She told Madam Copley how she had devoted the last six months to teaching Jessie Manning the art and mystery of her craft, how the neat-handed “little dear” had profited by her instruction; how, feeling her own strength over-taxed by the care of her father – now utterly helpless, and fearing, each day, that they might both have no place but the almshouse, she was desirous to place Jessie in a safe position, and it had come into her mind somehow, that Madam Copley, partly from charity, and partly that she might “be a wanting more help than she had for sewing, would take the poor little dear.” It so happened, that Martha hit half the truth. Madam Copley intended to pass the coming summer at watering places; her sempstress was to be transferred to the place of lady’s-maid, and Jessie would opportunely fill the void. “Of course,” Madam Copley said, “she should not choose a young and inexperienced girl, but she was always one that sacrificed herself. The child would not expect full wages?”

“Wages were no object,” Martha said; “it was kindness the poor little dear wanted, and a home out of danger, and all temptations.”

“For that, she could not do better than to come to me,” interposed Madam Copley. “I discourage visitors, and dress, and amusement, and everything of the kind in my servants, and always require them to be at morning and evening prayers. Immediately after Easter we go to the country, so you may send her tomorrow, Martha; it’s providential your applying to me just now.”

“I hope so, ma’am,” said Martha; but somehow the prospect did not seem so cheering to her as to assume the aspect of a providence, and she went away with so heavy a heart as almost to warrant the belief that dark events do cast their shadows before.

“It’s hard giving up the little fluttering dove that I have cherished, as it were, in my own bosom,” thought Martha; but she presented the best aspect of the change to Jessie, and reserved her tears and sighs for the night, and all night; and the next week, Jessie went from the battered tenement, where love was, to the splendid habitation of the self-righteous Madam Copley, where it was not.

Mrs Copley’s family were removed the following week to her beautiful country place on the Hudson. A little room overlooking a garden, was assigned to Jessie – a garden of Eden to her – fruits, flowers, fiend, and all. Baskets of sewing for the whole summer, were profusely provided by Mrs Copley’s maid, and industry enjoined by the mistress, whom she only saw at morning and evening prayers, and who, on her departure for the summer, delivered herself of a long lecture upon the duties of a servant to her employer. The duties of the higher contracting party were left a blank.

But Jessie was happy, never so happy. She breathed for the first time in her life, the air of sweet blossoming spring in the country. The wondrous volume of Nature was open before her. The rapid processes of vegetation amazed her. Every opening flower was to her the miracle it is; every singing bird God’s messenger. For weeks this new life was an enchantment to her. She found time, and did her tasks most dutifully, to wander over the garden, and along the riverside in the early morning, or through the long summer twilights, with her little spaniel frisking at her heels, and she enjoyed all with the freshness of childhood, and the zest of a newly created spirit. After a while, the keenness of novelty was dulled; she longed for companionship. She thought much of her mother, and with little hope, but much longing, wrote again and again to her. Fond thoughts reverted to poor old Martha, and she would murmur aloud, “I should like to spend a day again in that poor, dear, dark old room, and sit down on my little bench at Miss Martha’s feet, and lay my head on her lap, and feel her dear old hand patting it; hey, Beau, would not it be nice?” But Beau fared sumptuously every day; fortune had corrupted him, as it sometimes does his betters. He had grown lazy, and luxurious, and he wagged his tail languidly.

“Oh, you naughty Beau,” said Jessie, “you arn’t half so lively, and loving, as you used to be, and I think my heart is getting stony, living in this great, beautiful, lonely place.”

At this moment, Beau sprang up with a growl. It was a sure token a stranger was near. Growl on, Beau, your instincts are true! A stranger to Jessie and Beau was there – Mr Horace Copley, the future master of the place; and a very handsome, sweet-looking young gentleman, Jessie thought, as she turned her startled look upon him.

“What a gem to be sparkling in this solitude,” he thought. “I believe,” he said, in a gentle voice, “you are Mrs Copley’s – my mother’s sempstress? I am here for a few days from Newport, where I left her; she desired me to inquire for some linen you were to send her.”

From this moment, what a change came over the spirit of Jessie’s life-dream! What enchantments followed! What a new and thrilling companionship! What stealthy rowings by moonlight on the Hudson! What pretty gifts, ribbons, ’kerchiefs, rings, chains! What tender words! What fond promises of ‘sweet breath compounded!’ What caressing of her pretty hands! What partings, and what meetings! Newport no longer attracted Copley. In vain its beautiful aspirants lamented his sudden passion for farming. In vain was he reminded by messages from his fair fashionable lovers of promises to be present at “yacht races, fancy balls, and theatricals.” He came not; or if he came, it was for a hurried day to talk to his mother of changes to be made on the place, that no eye but his could oversee. Poor Jessie! she, the while, like an unconscious child, was plucking flowers on the brink of a precipice.

Madam Copley returned to her home in October, and on the very evening of her arrival, Jessie, at her humble request, was admitted to her presence. She was wan, pale, and dejected, and wrapped in a shawl. Madam Copley stared at her for a moment, uncertain if she were the girl she had left. “Why, child!” she exclaimed, when she had assured herself by a gaze at the lovely features, that it was the same, “what ails you? what makes you so shaky? have you had the chills?”

“No, madam,” said Jessie. The world was all a chill to her.

“I am glad it is not that; I should be very sorry to have chills and fever on the place. Neither I nor my son could stand it.” This seemed an audible reflection of the prudent lady. “Sit down, girl,” she continued. Jessie sat down; she could not stand, for weakness and dread. “Stop that dog’s yelping!” Jessie opened the door and took up Beau, who was vehemently pawing against it, and again sank into her seat. “You must send away that animal,” resumed the lady; “I never allow dogs here.”

“We are both going away, ma’am, please.”

“You going to leave! too sick to work?”

“I am, ma’am,” said Jessie, scarcely audibly. “My month was up yesterday, and I think – I – I hope, I may be better in the city.”

“You’ve no reason to hope any such thing. The country is far better for you; but that’s the way with you all – crazy after the city! You may take two or three weeks to recruit. John shall give you a ride now and then; there’s nobody more indulgent to servants than I am.”

“I wish to go, Madam Copley.”

“Oh, I dare say you do; but it’s all nonsense. We shall all go to town at Christmas; that’s quite time enough.” Madam Copley paused, and Jessie, making no reply, she resumed: “You are too young to judge for yourself. Stay where you are well off; I believe no one ever complained of my want of liberality; you are very young, child, but I will overlook that. I will raise your wages when you go back to work.”

“I can not stay, ma’am,” replied Jessie. There was decision in her very weakness, and Madam Copley yielded, saying, after she had called to her maid to reckon up Jessie’s dues, and pay her, “You are all alike; you never know when you are well off. Where will you get the privileges you have here? and I wonder who will make you the offers I have.” Mrs Copley’s offers were based upon the conviction that she had never had so neat-handed a sempstress as Jessie.

She replied not a word, but took her wages meekly and crept to her room, and when there, laid her head on Beau’s, and wept in agony till quieted by nature’s great nurse.

As Jessie left the room by one door, Horace Copley entered by another. He threw a piercing glance at his mother, and then adjusting his cravat before a mirror, he said carelessly, “Was that the little sempstress that left the room as I came in?”

“Yes; she is to leave tomorrow.”

“Why? does she not suit you?”

“Yes, remarkably; but she is sick or fancies she is; it’s probably only a hankering for the city; and the city will, in all probability, be her ruin. Satan lies in wait there for pretty, thoughtless girls!”

This last trite remark met no response from Mr Horace, though it fell distinctly on his ear, as he was leaving the room, humming an air from the last opera. He had attained the object of his visit to his mother’s apartment, ascertained satisfactorily that there was nothing of a confidential nature in her interview with Jessie. And the next morning this little stray lamb went forth without one provision for her future, or one pitying thought from the pharisaical woman who kept on in her smooth path of self-complacencies to the end. But that end must come, when those who touch not the load of human sorrows with one of their fingers, are to be judged by Him who says, ‘blessed are the merciful.’

At an appointed place, Jessie was met by Mr Copley’s own man. She was startled and distressed by the alternations of insolence and pity in his manner. He conducted her in a carriage to a house in Mercer Street, where he introduced her to the mistress of the house, a middle-aged woman, and there left her. She was then put into possession of an apartment, and told that Mr Copley had “provided the needful for the future, and done everything handsome by her.”

Left alone, she gave way to tears and sobs; and having cried till she felt relieved, she wiped away her tears and made an effort to consider her present and her future with all the little wisdom she had. Wisdom! she had none of it beyond the instincts of a pure nature – never, perhaps, except it were the lad Caspar Hauser, had a human being lived in this world, with less acquaintance with it than Jessie Manning. She had been betrayed by that very simplicity, and

“Goodness that thinks no ill,

Where no ill seems.”

She knew she had loved – she believed she had been loved – she knew she had been wronged – she feared she was deserted, and mingling with, and embittering all, was a confused sense of shame and degradation. A mere instinct of self-reproach it was. Who, of all the world could have cast the first stone at her?

“He promised to come soon to see me,” she thought; “will he? God forgive me for wishing he should. I can’t help it, I can’t help it! But what kind of a place is this he has sent me to?”

She cast her eyes around the room upon the tarnished gilding, the soiled embroidered curtains, fantastic French vases, and faded artificial flowers. “I don’t like it,” she thought; “oh, if I could be in some little place, with but a pillow to lay my aching head upon, far away from everybody, above all, from this bad-looking woman! But, perhaps he will come, and when I hear his soft voice I shall feel better. I ought not, God forgive me!”

Jessie had a quick and nice perception of wrong – a delicate sense, implanted by her Creator; perhaps developed by the early teaching of her mother. We know not whence it came – it was there.

One morning, after a frightful night of riotous noises in the disorderly house, she meditated on a possible plan of escape from it. Her abhorrence of her surroundings became intolerable, her heart was wrung with anguish. “I can not stay here,” she said, “I am afraid of everything. I can no longer bear the looks of that woman; her eye blisters me. Oh, if I were only back to old times with Miss Martha.” Her heart, for a moment, seemed to stop its beating. “She would pity me, I know she would!” she exclaimed aloud unconsciously, and unconscious even that Beau, at the sound of her voice, sprang into her lap.

“She would pity me, and forgive me, and love me for all. I will go to her; yes, Beau” – the little dog was looking wistfully in her face – “we will go to her; we will leave this horrid place, and this horrid woman. I have read that God hears the ravens when they cry to him for food – oh, I am starving for something more than food – surely he will hear me!”

She sank on her knees and uttered a single cry for help. That cry, we can not doubt, was heard and accepted, though to human sense mysteriously answered.

She rose to her feet calmer, and more calmly surveyed her present and her future. She took out her purse and counted her lawful wages: the sum was small. “It will help us, Miss Martha and me,” she thought. Then she took a roll of bank notes, which Copley had slidden into her hand at parting, and without looking at them, she threw them into the grate, and as they vanished in the burning coals – “Oh,” thought she, “that memory would but go so!” A harder task remained. She unbuttoned her sleeve, turned it up, and unclasped from her arm a beautiful bracelet – “With what smiles and kisses he fastened it there!” she said, “oh, dear! oh, dear!” She then proceeded to take a breast-pin from her collar – a serpent of gold and enamel, with small brilliants for its eyes; she shuddered: did it strike her as a symbol? and last, a delicate gold necklace from beneath her neckerchief. She looked at the charms attached to it, one by one, slowly, and for the last time, and sighed as she thought she had looked at them with him, when he explained them to her. She then put them all into a mother-of-pearl box, which Copley had given to her, and enveloping it in paper, sealed and directed it to him, and left the parcel in a drawer of the bureau assigned her. She then locked her trunk, and putting on it a card inscribed “to remain till sent for,” she slid it into a closet, out of sight, and ringing a bell, desired to “speak with the lady of the house.” The person, so called by courtesy, appeared, and when asked to send for a carriage, as her lodger wanted to go out on some business, she replied, in a manner that made poor Jessie more than ever eager to go, “And could not you tell that to the waiter, without sending for me? I am willing to treat you as a lady how-come-you-so? but no airs of a real lady here!” It was evident from the woman’s inflamed cheeks that she, at the moment, forgot the rich patron she was serving.

The carriage came, and Jessie directed the coachman to Martha’s number in Mott Street. She tottered up the steps and entered the old dark familiar entry, followed by Beau, who sprang up the stairs, and before Jessie could reach it, was pawing and whining at Martha Young’s door. It was locked; Jessie knocked, and repeated the knock, and a woman opened the next door, and said, “You want to look at the room? I’ll bring the key.” And so she did, before Jessie could answer her, and unlocked and threw open the door. There was no living creature within. The old man’s bed was nicely made up; Martha’s little cot beside it; that hospitable table, to which the hungry had always had a welcome, was placed in the middle of the room, with Martha’s little store of household linen, well preserved with darning and patching, piled on one end of it; the rest was covered with her old crockery, and small store of domestic utensils. The drawers of her bureau were open, exposing her wearing apparel and her father’s, all neatly arranged. “You see,” said the officious woman, who had unlocked the door, “it’s fixed for the auction, that comes off tomorrow morning. After that, you can have possession, if you like the place.”

“But where,” asked Jessie, apprehensive and trembling, “where is Miss Martha?”

“Miss Martha! landsakes! in heaven, child, she is. If ever anybody made a clear spring there, ’twas she!”

Jessie turned deadly pale, and gazed at the woman with a sort of stupefaction. She went on: “Are you kin to her, or friend to her, and did not know she and the old gentleman died the same day?”

The shock and the disappointment were too much for poor Jessie. She staggered into the room. It turned dark. She endeavored to grope her way to the bed, and just reaching it, sank fainting to the floor. The woman at the door, according to the usage established among her compeers of all ages, screamed a reveillé instead of quietly going to Jessie’s help; and the tenants of the rooms, upstairs and down, rushed out and crowded about the poor girl. Among them was one who was a tenant of the house in Manning’s time, and who, at the first glance, recognized Jessie. “Lord Almighty help us!” she exclaimed, “it’s the old crazy man’s daughter – it’s Jessie, it is! Stand back, women, all of ye – open the window – she’s dead faint! Och, Mrs Flannagan, ye mind how the poor old cratur, Martha, moaned after her, that last day – Oh, Mary, mother! help her, that she should come back so. And ’twas her name that was last on ould Martha’s blue cold lips; and this is her own little doggy!” and she patted Beau, who had recognized an old acquaintance, and was frisking about her with noisy demonstration. “D’ye know Maggy O’Brien, you loving brute you? Hist – she’s coming to herself – stand back, women! all of ye – lave her alone with me a bit – go away – go away – all of ye!”

The women went slowly – one pitying or curious soul lingered at the door. “Did ye ever, Maggy,” she said, “look upon a living cratur, so like that picture of Mary Magdalene, with her hair sweeping all about her, in the cathedral at home?”

“Not a bit of it, O’Flanagan. She’s young enough to be the childer of it, and there’s no look of bygone sin in this poor crater’s innocent face.”

Jessie drew a long sigh, and O’Flannagan, at an earnest motion from Maggy, disappeared, and considerately shut the door after her. Jessie was bewildered. She looked up at Mistress O’Brien, then around the room. A shiver passed over her frame, and she said faintly, “What has happened? Am I dreaming? Is this Miss Martha’s room? Did they tell me she was – was dead?”

“Oh, no – it’s no such tales they should be telling you now. Don’t you mind me – Maggy O’Brien, that lived in the room next the ould people?”

Jessie did, at a second glance, recognize her, “Oh, yes – thank God. It was you gave me the canary bird.”

“And faith do you mind that? So it was. And do you mind how you nursed it? and so will I nurse you, if you let me lay you in the clean little bed I keep for my own childer.”

Without waiting for assent or denial, she clasped her strong arms around Jessie, and laid her, in spite of all the chances to the contrary, in a very clean bed, in a small, neat room adjoining hers.

It was not long before the whole short story of Martha’s departure was told.

“From the day you left her, dare,” said Maggy, “it seemed the poor ould soul’s candle was going out. She just edged on through the summer, wearing waker and waker, and still stitching and stitching, when she had to worry maybe a half hour to find the eye of her needle – and always making everything comfortable for the ould gentleman, till this day week he dropped off, and she sunk down like a stalk when you cut away the root of it. He went in the morning, and she was after him before the sun set. She had her reason to the last, and she sent for her minister, and she called all the sinsible women in the house – that’s myself and Biddy O’Flannagan – to her bedside; and after he prayed with her, she told him she was ready and happy to go; and she bid him to see she and her father were dacently laid beside her ould mother. And then she asked us would we make everything ready for an auction, so that her things might be sold, and all funeral expenses paid; and then she would die as she lived, an honest woman, quit of the world? And so she was, even to seeing that me and Biddy was paid for our trouble, that she was as welcome to as water. When all was settled and done, her brain got cloudy, and one minute she’d pray to God, and it was a word for herself and two for you, ‘Jessie!’ ‘Jessie!’ ‘little dear!’ till the breath was out of her.”

“Oh why were her dying prayers lost!” murmured poor Jessie.

“Darlint, hush – maybe they’ll turn up yet. That’s just what we can’t tell – the why to anything. But och,” continued the good woman, after she had wiped the tears from Jessie’s face, “it would have been a drop of comfort to you to see her funeral. She, a poor lone old maid crater, as she was, to be followed by brothers and sisters, and lots of childer too, ye may call ’em – the prettiest funeral it was. Loving souls all that followed her. No kin of hers – no drop of her blood in the veins of them; but more than kin, by her loving deeds to them. There was ould Sam Farris, hobbling along on the crutches she bought for him seven years ago, he said; and there was lots of young ones that live hereabouts, that called her ‘Aunty,’ that she used to give peanuts to, and ginger snaps, and so forth – and oh, but she loved to please and humor ’em; and there was Jenny McLane, grown up to a slip of a girl – widow McLane’s only one – that same Martha Young watched with, years bygone, night after night; and all the Lowry family, that she staid with when they had the typhus – it was there she got her first wakeness in her eyes; and poor Sally Bird, the simple girl she took in, when her own people cast her out, for Martha was tinder-like even to sinners.”

“Oh her heart was full of love and pity,” exclaimed Jessie.

“Truth it was, child, and true mourners, with their mouths full of blessings, followed her; and let the priests say what they may, it’s not Maggy O’Brien that thinks St Peter would turn his back on the like of Martha Young.”

Mistress O’Brien’s sympathy naturally opened Jessie Manning’s heart to her; and in the course of the day she had made known her sorrows and her wants. And the idea of returning to her lodgings provided by Copley being perfectly abhorrent to her, it was concerted between them, or rather suggested by Mistress O’Brien, and acceded to by Jessie, that the former, authorized by an order from Jessie, should obtain the trunk containing her little all. Her present asylum was to be kept a secret. Mrs O’Brien proposed to obtain sewing for her, so long as she was able to do it, from Martha’s customers, whose names and residences she knew. It would not have been so easy to have wrested the trunk from the harpy in whose possession it was, but that by opening it with one of her own keys, she ascertained there was only very simple apparel in it, not the properties fitting her establishment; and further, having espied the parcel directed to Copley, she thought she might sequester it, and leave him to believe his baubles were still in his victim’s possession.

And now, and for the present, we leave Jessie Manning at not the most wretched epoch of her life.

Chapter 11

“For now her father’s chimney glows,

In expectation of a guest;

And, thinking this will please him best,

She takes a ribbon or a rose.”

Spring Lane is one of those secluded, winding roads, just wide enough for the passing of two carriages, that adorn the vicinity of Boston. The hand of “improvement,” reckless of beauty, and blind to nature, has yet spared it; and it is still fenced on each side with an impervious hedge of barberries, roses, spineas, and other wild shrubs, and enriched with little enclosures of independent homesteads and homes, where the dear relations and affinities exist, that are well symbolized by the bright berries and sweet flowers of the hedgerows.

In this lane, on ascending ground, and a little above a turn round a high rock, a boulder, that stands out from the adjoining field, is a small house, nowise distinguished from other houses of its class in the neighborhood, except by being out of repair, a singular feature where thrift and order prevail. The faded paint is kindly screened by a rich mantle of honeysuckles, Roxbury waxwork (dulca-mara), and Virginia creeper, now (in October) in its most brilliant color. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the ruinous porch of this decayed house, with its crimson, scarlet, and purple hangings. The sun was just setting, the sky golden to the zenith; golden, too, were the autumn leaves as they dropped from the boughs, stirred by the breeze, to a song of summer memories. And golden was the hue on the flaxen heads and sunburned cheeks of two sturdy boys, who, having clambered to the top of the boulder, were flourishing, at the end of two long sticks, many-colored cotton handkerchiefs. A whistle at the nearest station of the railroad, just under the hill, was heard; they shouted, and waved their flags. Their signal was answered, and they bounded off toward the station.

“He’s come, mother, he’s come!” screamed a little child, who stood in the porch watching the boys.

“He’s come, Letty!” echoed the mother to a damsel who stood at the window gazing out, and whose heightened color and beating heart already indicated that fact. “Why, Letty, why don’t you move? I tell you he’s come! Put the tea in to draw, set the chairs round the table, and put on Nat’s apron.”

“I don’t want my apron, Letty – he can’t see my boots if my apron is on,” cried out the little fellow, jealous of his first display of the attributes of manhood.

While Letty did all that she was bid, and more, the matron looked at the baking biscuits, set the white sugar on the table, the smoked tongue, honey, cakes, sweetmeats, and all the accessories that had been reserved in the pantry till the frugal housewife was sure of her guest. Letty slipped a napkin into a napkin ring, freshly embroidered with two letters in blue, and placed it, with a bouquet, on the table.

“I know those letters, Miss Letty!” cried the booted boy, “and I know who that place is for, and I know who the flowers are for!” and he snatched up the bouquet and buried his little dough-nose in it.

“Oh don’t, Nat! give it to me,” said Letty, dismayed at the peril of the sweet things, which seemed to her to have providentially blossomed at the right time. But she did not recover them. Off Nat ran to meet the party, which had now turned the angle of the boulder. A spare, elderly, hard-handed, careworn, and workworn man, with a sunken cheek, and hair thin and gray, was approaching, with his arm in that of a young man, who might be seven or eight and twenty. Weary and a hungered for his absent son the old man had been for many tedious months; now, by the bright twilight, might be seen infinite joy and sweet peace on that wasted face; and in truth, the younger man looked like one who fed his father’s lamp with the oil of gladness. The two boys were hanging on by his disengaged arm and hand, while little Nat, bounding toward him, tumbled head over heels, crushing poor Letty’s flowers in the dust. There they were left, unseen by him for whose eye they had been nurtured in dews, and pampered with every ray of autumn sunshine. There, covered with dust, their beauteous life crushed out of them, lay the rich Malmaison, the delicate Vervain, the brilliant Salvia – the precious flowers, over which Letty had said a hundred times, as she shifted the pots that contained them from shade to sunshine, “If they will only bloom for his coming! But I know they will not – nothing ever does happen as I want it.” Poor, prophetic Letty!

“Well, done! my little man,” said the brother, picking the boy up, shaking the dust from his dress, wiping his cheek, and giving him a kiss. “Is this our little Nat? why the boy was hardly on his feet when I went away!”

The child looked up, for an instant daunted into silence by a certain air and tone of breeding foreign to his rustic home; but a Yankee boy is not long daunted by anything, and he soon cried out, “Yes, I am Nat,” and thrusting out one foot, “don’t you see my boots?” The newcomer responded good-humoredly, while the father said, in an undertone, which did not escape his notice, “Poor boys! they don’t get boots every day now!”

A buxom matron of forty, with long flaxen curls hanging over her blooming cheeks, and a rustic toilette, somewhat elaborated, advanced from the doorstep to welcome the guest. There was no tenderness in the meeting, and no want of kindness. “How well you look!” she exclaimed, the word well covering a wide space. “I declare I should hardly know you, Mr Lisle.”

“Oh, no Mr Lisle-ing me, pray. Call me Archibald – Archy – any of the old familiar household names – there is home in the sound of them. But where is Letty?”

“Letty! Letty!” screamed the boys in chorus; “Letty, brother ’s come!” Letty appeared at the top of the stairs, which, as in most rustic houses in New England, fronted the outer door, and were near it. She rather slid, than ran down, and was stretching her hand to Archibald, when he caught her in his arms and kissed her, as he had kissed his little brothers. “Your hand, indeed! Letty,” he cried; “is that the way you meet me, after I have been away so long?”

“Why, what ails you, Letty, my own Letty?” asked little Nat, looking up in her face tenderly, “there’s tears on your cheek!”

“Tears of joy, then,” said Letty, blushing hot enough to dry them away.

“Oh, I know now what you are crying for,” said Nat, with a child’s inconvenient persistance, “’cause of the flowers! I am so sorry – I tumbled down, and lost them in the dust.”

“Oh hush, Nat, never mind,” said Letty, eager to prevent the allusion to her flowers being heard by him for whom they were destined; but there was no danger of this. The young man’s attention was arrested; he was eagerly looking around upon those material things that identify home, and which had lived in his memory. A shade passed over his brow. He was pained, as we are with wrinkles and time-stains on faces that we love. His father’s wife was a notable dame, and the house was clean and orderly; but there was a general worn out look, as if everything was used up – a faded threadbare carpet, discolored paint, a soiled paper, general indications of a want of means to produce the national aspect of thrift and tidiness. The shadow on the son’s face was answered by a sigh from the father; but his affection shone out, and cleared the atmosphere. “Come, my dear boy,” he said, “sit down to supper. Come, mother,” and looking complacently round upon the plentiful viands, “I declare! you have done your best. Sit here, Archy, in your old place, between me and Letty.”

“No, it’s my old place!” cried Nat, seizing Archibald’s chair.

“Little sinner! but take it – take it. The other side is next to father, too – just as good, Nat.”

“No, but it is not, though – t’other side is not next to Letty, too.” Letty smiled on her little champion. Archibald was adjusting his seat, and did not mark him. Words enter some ears but words, and into others as leaden weights sinking deep in the heart.

It was a noisy meal. The boys detailed their last winter feats on the ice, and their summer sports, beginning and ending with, “Oh, Archy, how we did wish you were here!” The father edged in a few items of political news, and the voluble matron beginning each sentence with a “Hush, boys, as if your brother would care for such nonsense,” retailed the miscellaneous country gossip – how “old Mrs Tibbits had died, after everybody was worn out watching with her; and how old Sally Ford had married at last, some said because she wanted to have Mrs put on her tombstone; but Sally herself said, it was because she observed pious people always prayed for widows, and never for old maids! And how their young minister had left them for another parish, and some folks said Letty best knew why! (Letty’s disclaimer did not arrest the flood tide.) How the antislavery fair had prospered, and the women’s-rights convention rather failed; how Adeline Clapp’s brother had come home from China, rich as Croesus; how the old gentleman’s fortune had turned out beyond account – the old place having sold for double what it was rated at – and some folks thought Adeline would heir her Uncle Medad’s property; how everything the Clapps touched seemed to turn to gold, but how, in spite of it all, Adeline was as friendly as ever, and had lately sent a letter to inquire when Archibald was expected.”

All things have an end, and so this temporal destiny brought a conclusion to the good woman’s communication. The meal ended, she retired to her household duties, and as soon as she had withdrawn, the gently flowing fountains of sweet family love that had been overpowered by her torrent were fully enjoyed. The evening was getting late when she returned, and addressing her husband, in the usual rustic mode, said, “Father, you look tired, not over well; I guess we’ll omit prayers tonight.”

“Not tonight! not tonight of all the nights in the year. I could not sleep without it. I feel unusually – but it’s far from unpleasant,” added the old man, with a pensive smile. “Let the boys stay up, mother – don’t send little Nat to bed. Here, Archy, at my right hand, you are my right hand – and,” he added, lowering his voice, “it will not be long before you take my place to these young ones; the thought gives me great pleasure.” It is well and fitting, when a son’s life pours a full tide into the dried channels of a father’s.

“Let us pray,” said the old man, with a solemn, tender earnestness, which indicated that prayer was to him an irrepressible desire – no studying of phrases, no preconsidering of words. He began with an ascription of praise from David’s Psalms, that mould into which the devout spirit so naturally runs. He then proceeded in what has been somewhat flippantly called the “narrative style,” the spontaneous expression of a simple, truthful heart communing with a Being, of whom it comprehends His providential oversight, His infinite love, and His tender sympathy.

Affection had daguerreotyped on the old man’s memory the circumstances of his son’s life. He now noted them with the minuteness of a scrupulous accountant. “It pleased thee, O Lord,” he said, “to remove from me my first companion – exceedingly pleasant she was unto me. Among all the daughters of thy people, there was none like unto her for wisdom to rule her household. Early didst Thou ripen her for Thy kingdom, and when, with her departure, Thy servant’s sun set, Thou didst leave one lesser light in his firmament, ever waxing stronger and stronger. Surely he was, as it were, the firstborn, the beginning of strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. And now, O Lord! in view of past mercies, thy servant offereth unto Thee here, at his hearthstone, his altar, as it were, his thank offering. Thou hast been an ever-present help to his heart’s-child. Thou didst save him in the sicknesses of childhood, that, like ravening wolves, devour the younglings of the flock. Thou didst preserve him in the slippery paths of childhood. Thou didst lead him ‘through the wilderness’ of boys; and when the temptations of youth beset him, though he was of a mirthful turn, though he loved sport, and mixed in dances to the sound of the timbrel and the harp, yet didst Thou keep his feet from sliding, and his heart from a snare! And, O Lord, Thou didst bless the labors of thy now aged and decaying servant, so that the lad himself being a fellow worker thereto, was carried through the heavy outlay of a college course; and there obtained knowledge, and walked uprightly, so that the elders spake well of him, and his companions loved him; and thou didst open a door for him in the thronged city, so that he had honorable place among those that expound the law, and right men’s wrongs; and when, failing health and so forth made it seem, as it were, wise for him so to do, Thou didst open up a way for him to visit far countries, and there thou wert graciously with him, so that he did not go up and down, and to and fro, following after singing men, and dancing women, but diligently sought after knowledge; and now, in Thine own good time, Thou hast brought him back to his father’s house, as it were, not the prodigal son who has wasted health and substance with riotous livers, but pure in heart, and with a ruddy countenance, through which the inner life shineth. Thy servant (the old man’s voice trembled) hath no fatted calf to bring forth – naught, but the salutation, ‘well done, good and faithful child.’” Suddenly the voice which had grown clearer and stronger as it proceeded in its devout testimony, failed. The old man seemed clearing his throat, and the family group, expecting him to resume his prayer, remained quiet in their positions, all, except the petted little Benjamin, Nat, who, patting the old man on the arm, whispered, “Go ahead, father, go ahead,” and the father, as if answering, resumed, but indistinctly and falteringly, “The youngling, may he – the elder carry the youngling – my little boy in his bosom – and comfort – and – protect – the use – useful – prof – profit – able companion of – his – my – later – days – ” Archibald was startled by this unusual stammering. He looked at the old man. The unmistakable paleness of death was on his face. Archibald sprang toward him just in time to receive him, as his head subsided backward. Letty knelt down beside Archy, her hands clasped in instinctive awe at the visitation of the solemn angel, whose presence was now certain. Archibald’s stepmother despatched her frightened boys for the doctor and the neighbors; and she brought out the common appliances for such exigencies. Archibald put them all aside, with a “hush, ma’am, it is useless.” Once the old man rallied, and his bodily and mental eye recognized life’s dearest, as the setting sun touches the highest, objects. He gazed on Archy with a smile more of heaven than earth, and said in a tone, just audible, “Your mother – my dear son – is waiting for me;” and then comprehending in a slow turn of his eye the group around him, he said, “Archy – the widow and the fatherless – I leave them poor – take care of them – my good son.”

“I will, dear father, so help me God.”

“And Letty, Archy – she has been so kind! Some day – perhaps – you and Letty –” His voice faltered. He groped about with his feeble hand, and took Letty’s, and attempted again to speak, but his utterance was gone, and the wish welling up from the very depths of his heart was paralyzed by the inexorable hand that was upon him.

“What did he say?” asked Letty, whose ear had not caught the last feebly uttered words.

“Never mind now, dear Letty. Lift his feet, we will lay him on the bed.” And as these young people reverently moved him into the adjoining bedroom, the good man’s spirit returned to Him who gave it.

Chapter 12

“Every day in thy life is a leaf in thy history.”

The moon that had lit the last nights of Archibald’s homeward voyage, shone on him and Letty, as they sat on the porch of his father’s house, on the evening after his funeral.

“I was struck with the change in my father, when first I saw him,” said Archibald. “Not only had he aged in my absence, but he looked ill to me. His hair had hardly begun to gray, when I went away, and now it is white. You never, one of you, wrote me that he was ill, Letty.”

“Well, Archy, he never was what one might call ill. He never laid by a day, when he could get work.”

“Get work! Surely my father has carried on his business as usual?”

“Well, no; but he forbade us each time we wrote giving you a hint of the change.”

“What change? What change do you mean? Do explain, Letty.”

“Well, the kind of work he did, is now mostly done by machinery; not half his time was employed to profit, and when he was idle, he worried. He never spoke sternly to me, but once, and that was when I begged him to let me write to you how things were going. ‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t do it – don’t think of it, you will displease me if you do. Letty, don’t do it. Let poor Archy lay up what health and strength he can, he will need it all; we can all work a little harder, and live a little poorer, and bring it round at last.’ But, Archy, he was discouraged, and he grew weaker every month; I could see it, though aunt never would allow it. You know she is so strong, and so hopeful.”

“She has nothing of your delicate perception, Letty.”

“She has something far better, Archy; she is always doing while I am only feeling.”

“Doing! – yes – Heaven help us.”

“Don’t speak so – don’t feel so, Archy; it is not right.”

“But you are right, dear little girl, all right, and I beg your pardon a thousand times. I should have remembered that she is your aunt, and only my stepmother. Letty, dear, she should have left us one week of peace; but such a flutter of work! such a calling in of gossiping neighbors to fit out the household in mourning weeds for my father’s funeral, even consulting me about cutting down his sacred garments for the poor little boys. What did it matter, Letty? our hearts are sad-colored enough.”

“Well, it’s her way, Archy, she is made so, and it has turned to good account. Many an evening, when you were gone, when your father would shut up his book because he was too dejected to read it – and you know how he used to love to read, and teach the children, and never could get time enough – he would sit and look in our poor fire, and sigh, and sigh, and aunt did not seem to hear him, but would sit cheerily at her sewing, earning money, making garments for the neighbors, or saving it, patching the boys’ clothes, always finding something to say, while I, a poor coward, young, and well, and yet, Archy, not able to face life, would go and cry myself to sleep, thinking of dear uncle’s pale face – and –” Letty paused, and stammered the rest, as if it were a confession, “and of how you would feel, Archy, if you knew all.”

“You are ‘made so,’ dear Letty,” said Archibald, and taking her hand, and pressing it to his lips, he added, “and I thank God for it.”

Letty drew away her hand. “I do not, Archy,” she said, “and you ought not to – I do not mean that exactly; but if I am weak by nature, I should resist that weakness.”

“No, no, Letty, it is your charm, it is loveable, this weakness, as you call it, and I would not have it changed for all the steel armor of this working-day world.” So, young men, the most sensible of them, talk to young women, and they believe them for the most part, and drift down the current. Letty did not, but the words were too sweet from Archibald to be gainsaid, and she let them pass.

“Indeed, Archy,” she said, after a little pause, “you ought to know all the exertion aunt has made. You must respect her, though she is not quite to your taste.”

“God forbid I should be unjust to her, Letty; I know she is a very good woman, though certainly, as you say, not quite to my taste. Could not you, Letty, ask her not to wear those long flaxen curls?”

“Archy!” Letty, for the first time smiled, but looked graver as she proceeded. “Aunt paid for all our wood, and many other things last winter, with the proceeds of our little school.”

“Our little school! Then you are not always indulging your natural ‘weakness,’ Letty?”

“Well, Archy, I could not fold my hands, and sit still; of course I could not eat the children’s bread. I had no right here, you know, Archy.”

“You, no right! you who have been the one blessed compensating boon in my father’s second marriage. Your right in our home stands as firm as its roof-tree, Letty.”

Tears that an angel, secure in happiness, might have envied, suffused Letty’s soft brown eyes as she turned them gratefully on Archibald; “You must not think I am boasting, Archy, though you tempt me to it. I did keep the school chiefly, but poor aunt was left to do all the hard work of the house, for she has kept no help for the last year.”

“All the work! the hard work, the washing, and that sort of thing?”

“Aunt has done it and never once murmured.”

“She is a good woman. Letty, you are right, and I am very, very wrong.”

“It worried your poor father more than it did aunt. He blamed himself for having married a second time, and brought such a burden on her. Aunt’s only fault was talking too much about home affairs; but that, you know, was her way, she could not help it.”

“She was made so.”

“Stop, Archy! the thing that most worried your father, was the way she got Albert into the West Point Academy.”

“How was that? I never understood that matter My father wrote to me that he had got the place, and I, but too glad to hear it, waited till I should get home for the explanation. Do you know how it was, Letty?”

Lettie smiled and shook her head. “Oh, dear, yes,” she said; “we had trouble enough about it. You know each State has a right to a certain number of appointments; and when Mr Medad Clapp was elected to Congress, aunt wrote – to – to Miss –”

“Not to Adeline Clapp!”

“Yes, Archy.”

“How could she? Did my father know it?”

“Well, not till it was all settled. She said uncle was so squeamish, and the only way was to go right ahead, and tell him afterward.”

“Why in the name of heaven, did not you speak, Letty? Surely your instincts must have told you how I should revolt from an obligation to Adeline Clapp and her vulgar people.”

“What could I have said to influence aunt? You know she thinks I have no energy.”

“Energy! so – she drove on her team?”

“Oh, Archy! she did what she thought right and best.”

“What did she do? tell me – heaven deliver me from such eternal doers!”

“Well – she wrote to Miss Adeline and reminded her of your intimacy with her brother, your classmate.”

“Intimacy! go on, Letty.”

“Well, she explained how it was that you were traveling, that you did not draw on your father, etc., but were using your own earnings, etc., and she told her why it had become necessary to get aid, if possible, to educate her boys so that they should not fall below their elder brother.”

“You need not tell me any more, Letty. And so it was the appointment was got for Albert. Miss Adeline pulled the bell, and Uncle Medad answered it!”

“Well, Archy, she was very kind after her fashion. She wrote directly to aunt, and said she would leave no stone unturned to get the appointment. She would go on to Washington herself, she said, and intercede with the members, and she did.”

“Oh, heavens, worse and worse!”

“Well; much as you seem to dislike her, she feels very much interested in you.”

“The devil take her interest! but go on, dear child, forgive me; let me know the whole of it, and make an end on’t; tell me all she said; I’ll screw my courage to the sticking point and hear it.”

“Well, if I must tell you all – I had rather not, Archy!”

“Yes, all – all – let me hear it all.”

“Well, she wrote two sheets from Washington, all crossed, telling us the names of the members she spoke to, and how she got introduced to them, and how there were two, one quite a young man for a member, and the other a widower, not more than forty, that made her proposals of marriage, and how she kept them in the dark, till she had gained her object – how Uncle Medad laughed and said, Adeline knew when to blow hot and when to blow cold, and they would never see the color of her money – and so forth.”

“Just as deep dyed in vulgarity as ever – dyed in the wool.”

“Then there was a long parenthesis in Miss Adeline’s letter which I read over and over, Archy. I believe I can recall it word for word.” There was a smile of unwonted archness on Letty’s lips, as she proceeded to the citation:

“I am peculiar in my ideas; I will never marry anyone, even if he were President of the United States, who is after my fortune. To be sure I like genteel men – Uncle Mede says that is my weakness – but to all others I prefer a self-made man; my father was a self-made man.”

“Yes!” interrupted Lisle, “and ill-made enough; but go on, Letty.”

“I don’t mean to marry a southerner, to waste what father earned. I don’t want any of your Virginia FF’s.[Virginia First Families] No, give me a Bay State man, with no ancestors. It would not be an obstacle if his father was a mechanic.”

Letty paused. Lisle bit his nails vehemently, and then rather ejaculated than said, “What did your aunt say to that, Letty?”

Letty seemed amused at his vexation, and smiling, replied in a low voice, that should have soothed a hotter irritation than Archibald’s,

“Well, Archy, aunt said she thought it was an advertisement for you.”

“Heaven grant she made no answer to the letter”

“Well, Archy, no – none – except –”

“Except! except what?”

“Well, aunt had to write – just to thank her for her present.”

“A present! and accepted? what was it?”

“Just a check for one hundred dollars, for Albert’s outfit.”

“Why did she not return it, why did not you burn it, Letty?”

“Archy!”

“You might at least have remonstrated. The vulgarity of taking it was only exceeded by the vulgarity of giving it. My father did not know it? Surely my father did not know it?”

“No; aunt did not feel to tell him.”

“I thought so. My father had an intuitive refinement – an instinctive perception that would have made him fly to his own covert from a shower of Clapp gold. There was not a drop of vulgarity in all the blood that filled his veins – mechanic though he was.”

“It is getting chilly,” said Letty, rising; “good night, Archy!”

“Good night – good night, my dear Letty!”

Letty could scarcely get to her own room, shut the door, and bury her face in the pillow, before tears and sobs came. “Oh!” thought she, “how Archy has forgotten! He might remember that we always used to feel alike. He might just know I should feel as he does about that hateful Miss Clapp! Remonstrate with aunt? He knows aunt always follows her own judgment. No – I see how it is – he just mixes me up with her – knows we are of the same blood, and thinks, as he says of Miss Clapp, that I, too, am ‘dyed vulgar in the wool.’ Well, I knew it was a dream! such a dream! I knew I must wake from it – but Archy should not have waked me so roughly.” Poor Letty! she had built a tower of hope upon a foundation of precious memories, and at the first light touch the fragile structure had fallen, and left the memories but a ruin to weep over.

Letty had come into her aunt’s family when Archibald was a college lad, and she a little child. Lisle had the frank and kindly nature that instinctively opens its heart to a child. He treated Letty lovingly, and she attached herself fondly to him. She was the constant companion of his holidays at home. He had the true New England taste and habit which blends use with enjoyment, and he brought to his vacation days study as well as play for Letty. He supplied to her the deficiencies of the district school. He read with her, and taught her mathematics and the rudiments of Latin and French thoroughly. The secret of the rapid progress that surprised him, was in her heart, not her brain. The hard work she achieved, depended on springs that one touch alone could set in motion. While she was yet a little girl, she did his bidding as eagerly and as deftly as did the gentle Ariel Prospero’s; and Archibald, invested with that mystic power, which is as absolute over woman, as was “staff and book” of Prospero over the island spirits, trained, and teased, and fondled her by turns. In time, as the plaything became the companion, Letty was not less intimately associated with his cheerful home holidays, when he was relieved from the harness, whip, and spur of his professional life. When he came home he was sure to find his room daintily arranged by her delicate hand. He was an ardent sportsman in his vacation days, and she had learned from the wood craftsmen of the neighborhood, the best fishing ground for the season, and the surest covers of the woodcock. Her faculties and senses were sharpened to one service. On his part, from a kind and lavish heart, he rained happiness upon her. His pleasures were incomplete without his “little girl,” as he continued to call her, after she had grown to the medium height of womanhood, and had the tremulous susceptibility that belongs to the age of unbounded hope, and narrow experience. Every affectionate tone, every spontaneous kindness, forgotten by him as soon as uttered or bestowed, were treasured in her “heart’s memory,” pondered on, and in many a solitary walk and pensive twilight, read into fond prophecies.

Was Archibald Lisle culpable in this? Oh no! he was, like other men, careless, thoughtless! He was like other honest, honorable men, who would not, for the world, authorize an expectation in their fellow man, and not satisfy it to the letter; and yet, by look, by word, by deed, they excite the susceptible, imaginative nature of woman, enlarge her horizon, extend her perspective, fill her firmament with sun, moon, and stars, and her earth with all glorious things, and then perhaps, surprised at the wrong they have done, the mistake they have made – perhaps unconscious of it – they go off to their career, be it what it may, and leave her in a dreary world, the lights gone, the colors faded, a vacant waste before her; and she – she bides the law of her condition. If she be of those highest natures that love once, and but once – if she become not saint or martyr, if she have not power to make an independent life, she subsides into the patient drudge of some household, and spins the silk that others wear; or, if of a lower nature, she becomes the colporteur of the town, or the gossip of the village!

The following is the end of a letter written by Archibald Lisle, on the eve of his departure from the paternal roof:

Pardon, my dear Mrs Clifford, my blotted pages. I have been raining tears over this detail to you of my brief meeting with my father. God only knows how I loved him in life – how I honor him in death! Had I known his condition, I should have come home six months ago. I shall forever regret a gain to myself, at the expense of a loss to him. My stepmother, whose valuable qualities I do full justice to (when I do not come in contact with her), will maintain her housekeeping, and take three or four boarders, and so, ‘by hook or by crook,’ they will live comfortably. I, by means of my own hard work and God’s blessing, will start the boys in life, and thus acknowledge a debt to my dear father, which I can never fully pay. Letty is a little jewel, or rather, she is worth all the jewels in a king’s crown, being more for use than decoration. Her cheerfulness is obscured just now, of course, for she dearly loved my father; but her pale cheek is, I think, but the livery of the country, which strikes me in painful contrast with the Hebe coloring in England. The dirge-like tone of her voice, too, is but the national note, not so much the voice of sadness as of ‘sickness.’ ‘Every village has its song,’ says Carlisle; I wish ours were a livelier one.

Pray do not suffer Alice to get this tone and drawl, and the everlasting provincial ‘well,’ the initiatory word of every sentence Letty speaks. Strange, that custom should make us so insensible to these intelegances. Poor Letty! I am ashamed to have been annoyed by these trifles. She is well instructed – cultivated even – and essentially refined, and yet these little provincialisms, like an ill-assorted color in an otherwise well-dressed woman, spoil the effect – ruin the toilette.

But Letty is a dear little girl, and already looks forward cheerfully to the career on which she is entering. I have determined to take her to New York, to live in the family of a worthy old German, a friend of mine; there she can have masters, and fit herself to be a governess. Some bright day she will be married; or, if she be not, she has too well ordered a character to fall into the discontents and repulsions of old maidism.

P.S. I am afraid that what I have written above about poor Letty, will remind you, as it does me, of your once saying that Miss G.H. had destroyed my taste for simplicity.

And I am ashamed to have felt any dissatisfaction with my stepmother. That want of tact, which (shame to us!) is so annoying, is a mere defect of organization. This good woman was devoted to my father, and now concurs in my plans for the children so cheerfully, and takes up her part of the burden so courageously, that truly I admire her.

Right your judgment of Miss H – dear Mrs Clifford. Her character is a complicated one – not artificial. It lacks not one of the qualities or graces that make the perfect woman!

There is a chasm of more than four years between this letter and the preceding one to Mrs Clifford. This chasm was filled by a faithful correspondence that, however interesting to the parties, is of no importance to our readers.

Chapter 13

“I slept and dreamed that life was beauty,

I waked and found that life was duty.”

More than four years have glided away since Eleanor’s marriage, and she is now a matron of six-and-twenty. She had experienced the transition, common in the happiest married relation, from adoration to friendship – passed from the tropics to the temperate zone, a passage that often chills conjugal happiness in its first blossoming. She had borne the perils and heavy responsibilities of maternity; and in addition to her share of the inevitable labor and annoyance from Celtic domestic service, she had satisfactorily responded to the demands on her time, strength, and sympathy from the multitudinous congregation of her husband. And yet the sweet serenity of Eleanor’s brow was unruffled, the composure of her spirit undisturbed. And why was she not impatient, petulant, unreasonable, disappointed, like half the petted children of fortune? Because she accepted life as God’s gift, and recognized, in all its details, the infinite love that floods it with enjoyments. Because she received life’s tasks as her divine Master’s appointment, and performed them with a cheerful filial spirit, a religious obedience and faith. A happy temperament may sustain one through a healthful and occupied youth, but nothing less than a religious spirit can meet the strain when cares, and toil, and change – that come to all – come. And certainly, nothing less can overcome the greater perils of ease, luxury, and indulgence. If it be not so, why do we hear such a pestilent breathing of ennui and complaint from homes that should be alive and happy? Why do our most gifted and accomplished young women question life instead of using it, as if its harvests could be reaped without being sown? Why do so many married and unmarried women waste, and fret, and fritter away life, instead of seeing that each cross, trial, and blessing is a rung of that ladder which is set for them to mount to heaven! Let them pray and strive for the spirit that makes life duty, and duty life.

Eleanor had sustained all the ordinary trials of her position. She had now something harder to struggle with – something that would require all the strength of her well preserved health, and all the equanimity of her cheerfully religious spirit.

In the midst of her husband’s popular and satisfactory career, he was disturbed by secret misgivings on points of faith, which he had professed and promised to preach. He was too honest a man for compromises and shams, and his scrupulous investigations and overwork in every way – the malaria of our atmosphere – were beginning to tell on his health and temper.

The four years over which our history has leaped, had brought Grace to the ripe age (in our fine world) of twenty-two. Whether and how time had modified her character in these four years, she will best show. She entered her sister’s nursery one bright morning, when Eleanor was repairing a vest of her husband’s. Her eldest child, May, was sitting on a stool beside her, pricking her little finger with her first hemming. A boy, not yet two years old, was toddling about the room, watched, through his mischievous gyrations, by his busy mother; and an infant girl of six months was sleeping in the crib. Awakened by Grace’s entrance, she opened her eyes, and stretched her arms toward her. Grace caught her up, embraced her vehemently, waltzed around the room with her, calling her fond names, and then laying her down, she gazed at her with an expression half curious and half sad, and sighed.

“Nan gives you a smile for your sigh, Grace!” said the mother.

“Yes, poor child.”

“Why, ‘poor child?’”

“Why! ah, Eleanor! she only smiles because she does not see beyond the threshold of life – the life she will spend like most of us – not you, dear – ‘in drawing water in leaky vessels.’ She is now in the freshness of Paradise, but she sees not the ‘mournful Eden’ beyond it, and she smiles, Eleanor. I sigh, seeing the rose tints of dawn changing to leaden hues, the clouds of disappointment and infinite tediousness gathering.”

“But, dear Grace, life is like a picture. Its beauty depends on its lights and shadows, and those we can adjust for ourselves.”

“Yes, for the picture, but not for life, Eleanor – not for life. Never reason from analogies, they always mislead.”

“Then I appeal to primitive truths. God gives life, and therefore it must be a good.”

“And so I have tried to look upon it and to be content with it. When you lived with us, Eleanor, I was happy – I was young then – the rose tints had not quite faded. And after you left us, for a year or two, life slid away. I filled it up with the precious stuff that Anne Carlton’s life is made of; with dresses, and gaieties (so-called!) and ‘beaux.’ And when this bored me intolerably, I took yours and Frank’s advice, my dear physicians, and sought occupation. I took to my music, and studying and reading German; and then, misled by flattery of a talent for art only a little more than ordinary, I took to painting in oils. But after six months’ work, and poor old Bossi’s admiration growing from ‘Bene, bene!’ to ‘Admirabile!’ I saw a true Murillo, that ‘holy family of Tallis’ – how dare his wife look at it? – I kissed it – I knelt before it – and, as you know, Eleanor, I went home and ordered all my bedaubed canvas to the garret. After that, you coaxed me into your school for the German emigrants. I was interested for a while, but it was not my calling, and now I have subsided into the old rut with Mrs Herbert and Anne, and am not a whit better, and not half so happy as they.”

“But, dear Grace, you know as well as I that happiness is not got by running after it.”

“Ah, good morning, Frank!” exclaimed Grace, “I am glad you have come in; Eleanor was just beginning one of her lay sermons, which I particularly dislike, because they always end with leaving me in the wrong, convinced, but not cured; and what is the use of conviction without amendment? Pardon my disrespect to your profession, Frank, but speak honestly – is anyone ever made better by preaching?”

“Certainly – my whole congregation.” The slight smile that quivered on Esterly’s lips vanished as he turned to his wife, and said petulantly, “Eleanor, do I own a pocket handkerchief? There is not one in my drawer.”

Eleanor went to her husband’s dressing room, returned, and giving him a handkerchief, said, with a smile, “There is a pile of at least a dozen there.”

Esterly was absorbed in forcing a stud through a stiffly starched shirt bosom, and did not look into Eleanor’s face to see its unruffled sweetness, but thrust the handkerchief into his pocket, without the “thank you” a gentleman bestows on a maidservant.

“I really wish, Eleanor, you would not forget to speak to Bridget about doing up my shirts so abominably,” he said.

“I have spoken to her, repeatedly.”

“Then turn her away – it’s intolerable.”

He left the room with a nod to Grace, but turned back to say, “I am not sure I shall return to dinner. You may wait for me till five, Eleanor.”

“Eleanor, dear sister, you are a saint!” exclaimed Grace; “I should detest a man, if he made me responsible for the order of his drawers, and the starching of his shirts.”

Eleanor colored slightly, but not a muscle of her face was discomposed.

“What transformation is there,” continued Grace, “in the old myths, half so horrible as that of a lover into a husband?” Just think of the devoted lover Frank was, four years ago; a handkerchief you had but touched, was sacred as a holy relic to him, and he would have sacrificed the whole Protestant Episcopal Church rather than have kept you waiting an hour for your dinner.”

“Then, Grace, he has gained in rationality what I have lost in homage.”

“Eleanor, don’t affect to justify him. I would not have you an exacting wife, but I can not endure such utter self negation. I know very well what Frank is – an excellent husband in the main, very far better than most men; but that is only saying he is far better than most brutes.”

“My dear Grace, you are in a worse humor than poor Frank, this morning, but still, I think it would do neither him, nor you, nor me good if I were to be vexed with him, or with your attack on my husband, and fly out upon you for it.”

“You fly out! When lambs ‘growl and fight,’ and doves pick out vultures’ eyes, then you will ‘fly out.’ The truth is, Eleanor, you are too unresisting, almost impassive. When was there anything gained in this world by inert submission? I do not like women publicly to champion women’s rights. The Madame Georges, and our own prizefighters in women’s conventions have made the very phrase odious; but I would have every woman, in her own place, maintain her dignity, and not submit to those little domestic wrongs and tyrannies of your ‘very good men,’ which are vestiges of the dark ages.”

“You would recommend a species of guerilla warfare, my dear, a fighting hand to hand in the seclusion and fastnesses of home.”

“Fighting! no, but remonstrance – and – and resistance, if need be. Tell me, honestly, Eleanor, do you really think that your husband had any right to speak pettishly to you, because his pocket handkerchiefs were not where his lordship expected to find them? to flout you, because your laundress happened to put rather too much starch in his shirts? or to make you wait an hour for your dinner, with more discourtesy than he would have used toward the keeper of a lodging house? Now, answer me fairly, and not as a special pleader for Frank – come. I see your feelings are roused: there are those red spots on your white throat that always indicate that your wellspring of feeling, which lies deep, is stirred; but answer me fairly, Eleanor.”

“I will, Grace.”

“Yes, perfection, I know you will – proceed.”

“The relation between husband and wife, like all the other relations of life, is imperfect, and more difficult than any other, because it brings our imperfect natures into the closest relation, complicated by complete community in some respects, and indestructible individuality in others.”

“Pray, my darling,” interrupted Grace, “do you indite Frank’s sermons for him?”

“If I did, Grace, my next should be on patience, and you should be the ‘awful example.’”

“You are heavenly, Eleanor – go on.”

Eleanor proceeded, very much in earnest. “The nature of the relation must account for a vast deal of imperfection on both sides, and for some unpremeditated wrong on the part of the husband. There are little conjugal tyrannies that are relics of the stern domestic despotisms of past times, which even such a man as Frank, good, kind, generous as he is, and more loving than the lover, is unconsciously guilty of. If anything goes wrong in the household, the husband frets at the wife, as we fret at the weather, without ever thinking, in either case, that injustice is done to the Providence that orders without and within. But the condition of women and wives is ameliorating. Honest and generous men are righting our great legal wrongs; and if our virtue improves with our condition, the time is not far distant when such a man as Frank will not –” Eleanor hesitated; she could not bear to finish a sentence to her husband’s disadvantage.

“When he will not, like a cross horse, bite his mate whenever the harness galls,” interposed Grace; “but go on, Eleanor.”

“Frank is never deliberately unkind, or even inconsiderate, Grace.”

“And you are never stung by his injustice – extempore? impulsive? – spontaneous?”

“That I did not pretend. Frank has the irritable temperament that belongs to a fervent character. He is often harassed in ways that you do not know, and overworked, and not well; and I, who best know the causes of his little irritations, am best able to bear them. If I were to remonstrate, and expostulate, and stand upon my dignity – most uncomfortable ground to stand upon – or if I were to sulk, or to weep, these transient dissatisfactions would ripen into disgust, and then where would our love be? – the treasure – the life of our lives! You know, dear Grace, there is a law of nature, by which running streams, if not disturbed by external forces, deposit their impurities, and so I think our affections by this divine law will become purer and purer, till the mortal stream passes, in crystal clearness, into the ocean of eternal love.”

“Happily symbolized, Eleanor. And so, if I understand you, your patience, and forbearance, and love, is, in the life-long course of the conjugal stream, to perfect Frank’s purification?”

“I certainly did not mean, Grace, to make any such pharisaical pretension. If I am patient with his foibles, he is very forbearing with my faults. These trifling interruptions of our tranquillity pass like the summer breeze over the grain field – the crop is the stronger, the harvest is the richer for them. If you will stay and dine with us today, you will see that neither Frank nor I remember that he was ruffled this morning.”

“Oh! no doubt his feathers are smoothed down by exercise in the open air, and – perhaps – a little parochial flattery. Yours need no smoothing down, Eleanor, for they are never ruffled.”

“My temper is less perturbable than Frank’s: no merit of mine, for I have better health, and fewer annoyances. But, Grace, I have faults quite as serious as his, and far more annoying to him than his are to me.”

“In what undiscovered region do they lie, my dear?”

Eleanor was about to reply, when the tête-à-tête was interrupted by a quick step on the stair, and a recognizing exclamation from little May of, “There’s papa again!” and Esterly entered, his face radiant with pleasure. “Eleanor,” he said, “Archibald Lisle has arrived! I met him coming to see us – looking so well, and so handsome. He has promised to dine with us tomorrow. You must come too, Grace; and ask Uncle Walter.”

“Certainly I will come, and you may be sure of Uncle Walter – Mr Lisle was such a favorite with him; and I like a fresh traveler, before he subsides into the dullness of business life.”

“And, if I remember, Grace, you liked him before he was a traveler?”

“Yes, I think I should have liked him better if he had given me the opportunity; but like most of our clever young men, he kept aloof from society – so called. Is he at all changed?”

“No, except in an appearance of health. He looks as vigorous as an Englishman; and, perhaps there is now something of the air of a traveled man – a man of the world – and less –”

“The air of a rustic?” said Grace.

“No, he never had that; less the air of a hard-working lawyer.”

“We will not quarrel about terms, Frank. I remember it distinctly – Horace Copley called it ‘the stoop legal.’”

“Horace Copley! I wish his ‘inner man’ were as erect as Lisle’s.”

“Do not be quite so professional in your slurs, Mr Frank,” said Grace. The eyes of both husband and wife glanced at Grace, and then met. Grace colored slightly, while she said carelessly, “I suppose travel has had its usual effect in polishing your friend?”

“I can not say. To me, he is the identical ‘Archy’ of our old, cordial days; the same light in his face, the same warmth in his heart. The color of his coat is changed; poor fellow! he has lost his excellent old father. But truly, Grace, I did not look at the tie of his neckcloth, nor am I quite sure whether a moustache adorn his face or not – neither could make, or much mar him.”

“A concession, brother Frank, from one whose priestly office forbids all such adornments. But where has your friend been, what sphere illuminated, since he left us?”

“He has been through a course of lectures on the civil law at a German university, and in the mean while delving in the German language and German literature – thus occupying the first six months, and the last nine he has been running over Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine.”

“Bless me! I thought he was a poor young lawyer, forced abroad to recover his health.”

“So he was. Not absolutely poor, either. He had two or three thousand dollars to spare, and chose to invest them in health and accomplishments, which could be had abroad at a cheaper rate than at home.”

Grace sighed. Possibly she thought of men’s different tastes in investments, for, the preceding evening she had heard a snobbish friend of Horace Copley enumerating, with a tailor’s precision, the costly articles of his luxurious wardrobe, and conclude with a sum total of $2,000 for annual investments in coats, vests, etc. “Pray, Frank,” continued Grace, pursuing their subject, “can a man, just well started in his profession, lay it down and resume it at pleasure?”

“No – certainly not in New York, where an individual is not missed much longer than a particular wave from the ocean.”

“He can hardly expect,” said the considerate Eleanor, “another piece of good fortune, like that of his partnership with our old Counselor Jones.”

“Perhaps not,” replied her husband, “but it was by his merit he attained that good fortune, and in due time his merit will set him on his feet again. He depends on no accident of patronage. With his experience, accomplishments, laboriousness – and necessities, he can not fail.”

“Necessities, Frank?”

“Yes, his father has left a young family to be taken care of; so, as he says, he must to work at once.”

“Yes, work – work – work!” echoed Grace, “the demon that haunts the American mind. All are alike ridden by this ‘man of the sea.’ Work for money – for fame – for duty. Truly we work out the primeval curse. We are all taskwork workers!”

“With a few notable exceptions,” said Esterly; “Copley, par exemple.”

“Yes, Mr Esterly, Horace Copley is an exception. He is a man of elegant tastes, elegant manners, and elegant ‘idlesse.’”

“And very elegant fortune, my dear sister, to the right expenditure of which, if he continues favored by your approbation, I trust he will sacrifice his elegant idlesse.”

Grace threw on her cloak, and was abruptly bidding “good morning,” when little May called out, “Come back, my Grace, and kiss me!” Grace turned to embrace the child, but she held her at arm’s-length, and looking at her with an expression of detective truth, the Ithuriel spear that children come armed into the world with, she said, “You are not good this morning, Grace – you are not my Grace!” Grace made no reply, but as she went down the stairs, she wiped away hot tears that sprang from a consciousness responding to the child.

Chapter 14

“Be thy dinner simple and sufficient,

And let thy guests be thy sauces and spices.”

Grace Herbert was in a false position in our American Paris. Happy those who find their right one anywhere! A creature of her rare gifts was about as well adapted to the fashionable world of New York, as a first-rate ship would be to the artificial lake of a pleasure ground. In other civilized countries, where there is a privileged class sustained by transmitted rank, individuality of character is fearlessly exhibited in high life, and talent is variously cultivated and developed in the brilliant accomplishments that enamel its society. Time-hallowed names and new-made honor playing a part in the same scene, produce dramatic effects; and boldness in vice, and picturesque eccentricities sustain the interest, at least while youth lasts.

But with us whatever is noblest and most effective in character is, for the most part, strained out of this life. Who hopes to meet our poets, our artists, and our historians at the “most brilliant party of the season,” or but by some rare chance, to see there an heroic Arctic adventurer, an eloquent advocate, or a renowned statesman; or, far below them, on the scale, the ripe men and women who constitute the intellectual capital of the country? No, our society is characterized by the monotony and infinite tediousness of mediocrity, by a vulgar and childish struggle for the most insipid of all celebrities, a celebrity for fine dress, ‘palatial’ houses, costly furniture, showy equipage, and surpassing expense in entertainments. The inevitable consequence is that our drawing rooms are not, we believe, quite the vulgar arenas they have been described, but they are for the most part abandoned to boys and girls, whose keen appetite for pleasure has not been dulled by even one campaign experience; and a woman of two-and-twenty, like Grace Herbert, if not occupied by an engrossing affection, is in this fine world – if we may risk the ungracefulness of the comparison – much like a locomotive off the track. If she had been absolutely poor and friendless, she would have found a safety valve in employment. “The ashes of her own fire would not have choked her soul.” If her destiny had been cast in the country, its unmasked life and healthy simplicity would have tended to a serene existence. She might, it is true, have made her own life, but as yet she had yielded to the intensity of her nature, not controlled it. Such intensity is like fire: if the best servant, the cruelest master.

At this crisis of her life, she was in danger of resigning the control of this element to another in whose hands it would be sure to become a destructive agent. At Eleanor’s house, she escaped from the ordinary insipidity of the winter’s routine. She anticipated the dinner hour on the following day, and ran up to the nursery for a romp with the children, while her Uncle Walter went to the library. The library and drawing room were one in Eleanor’s limited household. Little May sprang into her arms with a clamorous welcome. “Oh, Grace!” she said, “my own Grace, today! Where did you get that red rose in your hair?”

“And what if I don’t tell you, May?”

“Then I shall guess.”

“No, no! no guessing, May; take this bouquet to your mother – tell her it is sent by our kind stepmamma – and here is a tiny rosebud for you from my own bouquet.”

“Oh, thank you; but Grace, why do you always call grandmother ‘stepmamma’ and ‘stepmother?’ Mamma never does.”

“Do as your mamma does, my dear, and ask me no questions.”

“Ask no questions and guess no guesses; but I shall, though!” pursued the child, with arch pertinacity, perceiving by a sort of mischievous intuition that she teased her aunt. “The red rose and, I guess, the bouquet too, came from –”

Grace put her hand over the child’s lips, and while she laughed and struggled, Eleanor said, “Wherever it came from, Grace, it becomes you; but it is a camelia, May – a Japan rose.”

“So it is; and Mr Copley said – have not I guessed, Grace? – Mr Copley said, mamma, that red camelias were created for Aunt Grace’s hair.”

Eleanor looked at Grace as if to verify Mr Copley’s opinion. Her eye met her sister’s, and Grace’s eye fell. Children are quick interpreters. May put her chubby little arms around her aunt’s neck caressingly, and said, “Now don’t be angry with me, Grace.”

“Angry, May! What on earth makes you think I am angry?”

“Why you don’t look as you did when Mr Copley said that – then you smiled all the time.”

“Take care! you little spy,” said her mother, “or your Aunt Grace won’t let you stay with her, when Mr Copley is there.”

“Then I shall hate him, for he is always there,” replied the child.

“In that case, my dear, yours will be a united family,” said Grace.

“Don’t chastise the parents over the child, Grace,” said Eleanor; “depend on it, we shall never hate whom you can love.”

Little May was perplexed, but snatching at a meaning, she said, “Do you love Mr Horace Copley, Grace?”

“I love you, May.” The child knowing but one quality of love, was quite satisfied that she outrivaled Copley, and Grace prevented further queries by asking her sister if she expected any other guest than Mr Lisle?

“Yes; Miss Adeline Clapp.”

“What! that intrusive, vulgar young woman from Clapville? Why did you ask her?”

“Simply because I could not help it.” Eleanor did not understand the severe purport of her words. She “could not help it;” Miss Clapp had accidentally learned the preceding evening that Archibald Lisle was to dine with Mr Esterly – she resolved to be of the party, and her resolve was destiny. “She called here this morning,” continued Eleanor; “I found her in the library, the folding doors open, and Bridget arranging for dinner. I told her, by way of apology, that I had given orders to Bridget to say that I was engaged. ‘The girl told me so,’ she replied, ‘but I knew you would not mind me – I never make myself a stranger.’ Then, after asking me a cluster of questions, and ascertaining who was coming to dine with me, she professed an old intimacy with Mr Lisle, and concluded by saying, ‘I have a great mind to dine with you, too, today – voluntarily – that is what Uncle Medad calls being hospitable.’ You see, Grace, I could not help myself.”

“I see you did not; if people are ignorant of conventional rules, and have no instincts, you should harden your heart in self-defense, Eleanor. You have spoiled our dinner. If we were a large party, this savage would not harm it, but a bad flavor in a simple dish ruins it. Uncle Walter, whose very soul it grieves to decline a good dinner, will not accept an invitation till he has a bill of fare of the company. He dreads to meet those who will either bore him, or not understand him. The other day, at a dinner company at home – our stepmother is rather remarkable, you know, for ill-assorting her guests – that old pedant Price quoted a long, irrelevant passage from Dryden. ‘Dryden! Dryden! who is Dryden?’ exclaimed Uncle Walter. Afterward, in the drawing room, Mrs Hall said, ‘How very odd, your Uncle Walter never heard of Dryden! why, dear, he is the glorious John, so often spoken of in the “Pirate!” ’”

“Did you set her right, Grace?”

“I? No – that would have suited your milk of human kindness; I merely shrugged my shoulders, and said, ‘Is he?’ and was no doubt put in the category of ignorance with my Uncle Walter. No, Eleanor; you may as well have guests speaking different languages, as with such wide disparities as there are between Miss Adeline Clapp and Archibald Lisle!”

When the sisters came down to the library, Uncle Walter kissed Eleanor, as was his custom, and surveying her with satisfaction said, “By George, Nelly, you are the best dressed” (en passant, Eleanor’s dress always harmonized, like the colors of a flower) “best little model woman, wife, and mother in the United States.”

“Happiest, Uncle Walter – say happiest, and leave out your other epithets.”

“No, my child; but add that, it fits with the rest. One may be good without being happy, but never happy without being good – and that aphorism is as old as Seneca.” He then murmured, in a low voice:

“Give me the pliant mind, whose gentle measure

Complies, and suits with all estates.”

He turned his eye to Grace. She smiled and nodded, accepting her sister’s praise, and her own implied dispraise. “But, Eleanor,” he continued, “where is May? You promised me my cotemporaries!”

Eleanor explained that May had been sent away to give place to an unexpected guest.

“Then, Nelly,” he said, “I am to be the only child in the company?”

“Yes, Uncle Walter,” rejoined Grace, patting his bushy gray head; “the only boy, and welcomed and loved because you are a boy, and always will be!”

The flow of family satisfactions was suspended by Archibald Lisle’s entrance, his face beaming with the yet fresh joy of his recent return. He was merely bowing to Grace, when she cordially extended her hand. His face lighted with a flush of surprise, which had not subsided when Miss Adeline Clapp entered, producing a Gorgon influence on the general vivacity, and almost paralyzing Lisle. She rustled in, overdressed for the occasion in an over-flounced and over-trimmed plaided silk of all colors, with flame-colored ribbons in her hair, which harmonized with nothing but the perennial color of her cheek. As Miss Clapp is a real person, we are bound to exhibit her as she is daguerreotyped on our memory. She was as tall as any of the muses, and remarkably well made, but not in the least like the Graces, for an ever-present self-consciousness made her stiff as a lay figure. Her feet were small, and always en scene. Her hands were white, and emblazoned with rings, of more sparkle than value, for it was Miss Adeline’s boast that she never made “unproductive investments.” Her features were regular, except the nose, which was a tower of strength, long, high, and aquiline. For the rest she may be served in superlatives. Her skin was very white, so were her teeth. Her hair was very black and abundant, with a very unrelenting cowlick. Her identifying peculiarity, her “mark,” was a deep, unvarying color. No variation of feeling deepened or paled it. Like Caesar’s wife, it was not to be suspected, for it suffused the nose, and dyed the angle of the chin – it was fierce!

Miss Adeline went through the prescribed greeting to the hostess, and then turning upon poor Archibald Lisle raked him, as a broadside from a man of war might a defenceless yacht. His two years abroad had done pretty well for his natural shyness, but had not fortified him against such an attack. “How pleasant to meet you again, Archy,” she said; “you know, Dates and I always used to call you ‘Archy’ – and to meet, too, when I least expected it!” – the relentless woman had been weeks plotting the meeting! – “and only two days after you got to the city!” Lisle blushed and stammered, said she was “very kind,” and felt as if he could bite off his tongue for saying so; but when she proceeded to say, in a lowered and emphatic tone, giving to her communication the aspect of old intimacy, “Just eight years, last Thanksgiving, since we parted!” he became confused, half turned away, and overset a light Italian chair, which, as all Italian chairs do, broke. Esterly came to his relief, saying, “Go make your peace with my wife;” and then making good his intervention, he laughed at his friend’s characteristic “bad luck.” “Mr Lisle was a great favorite of my poor mother,” he said, “but she had rather a dread of the peril to lamps, inkstands, etc., when he came to see us – I am glad to find him unchanged.”

“Unchanged! my! do you feel so? Well, to be sure I have not seen him for eight years, and then I saw him in – in peculiar circumstances,” again Miss Adeline lowered her very nasal voice, and cast down her eyes mysteriously. Happily, any further communication was prevented by the announcement of dinner, and Esterly took good care to place the young lady as far as possible from her victim. Miss Adeline was restive. “Well,” she said, “if I felt about married gentlemen as most young ladies do, I should have a set-to, Mr Esterly, with you for placing me so far from the only beau present. I hope he does not overhear,” she continued, turning her eyes to Lisle, and taking advantage of the momentary silence preluding the onset of knives and forks, to make sure he did.

“Confound her,” muttered Uncle Walter, in a tone so low, that Grace alone heard it, and she forgave it.

But the ill-sorting guest – the bad ingredient – did not, as Grace had predicted, spoil the dinner; the other materials were too strong and too flavorous to be so overpowered. The genial flow was now and then interrupted by a cross shot from Miss Clapp, who asked Lisle if he were not homesick when abroad. To which he most distinctly replied, “Never.” And when she answered, “Well, that’s a compliment to your friends at home,” he rejoined, “I heard regularly from all the friends I cared to hear from,” after which, she was miraculously silent for half an hour.

No man enjoyed a good dinner – the rite of social life always enjoyed by men of genial quality – more thoroughly than Uncle Walter; but when canvas-backs and delicate birds succeeded to the first course, he said, “Come, come, Nelly, this won’t do; I called you my model woman, and you are giving in to the excesses of the town.”

“Excesses, Uncle Walter,” said Grace, “after your dinner yesterday in Fourteenth Street, where, you told me, each guest was rated at twenty-five dollars a head?”

“My dear Grace, do you think I bring our little transcendental woman’s hospitalities into comparison with such a feeding and pricing fête as that?”

“Transcendental! Uncle Walter,” said Eleanor. “Do you mean to satirize me?”

“No, my child. I keep my satire for Grace – who feels it. But do not you and Esterly maintain that the luxury of your table is to consist in your guests, and not in your viands? I don’t clearly understand the meaning of your new-fangled words; but I supposed that was transcendental – (the bird is delicious!) Did not you invite your charming English friend to meet Bryant here, to dine with you upon a single joint of meat, and a simple pudding? Is not that spiritualizing, transcendentalizing hospitality? Give me another bit of the ‘good creature,’ Frank. This time Heaven has sent the cook, as well as the meat.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Miss Adeline, “how odd it must seem to you, Mr Lisle, just coming from Paris, to hear such an ado over a pair of canvas-backs!”

“Odd!” repeated Lisle, “a ‘home-cut and come again’ sirloin of beef is delicious to me, after frugally feeding at French Restorateurs, and Italian Trattorias.”

“A sirloin of beef! yes, indeed,” said Mr Herbert, “even a beef steak, cooked by our old Diana, is a dish for a king – a mouthful more, Frank – the goddess has roasted them to a turn – you don’t know the goddess, Mr Lisle. She was born in the last century, and reared, and taught by a past generation, in those golden days before the Celts came in. Heaven help you who have fallen upon the latter times of Irish cooks. The goddess would rather suffer the martyrdom of St. Lazarus, and be broiled on one of her own gridirons, than to see her old ‘misses” daughters adopt the fashionable ‘à las.’ I shy them too. I have a Jew’s horror of unclean beasts. I like to eat the dear familiar creature I know (one mouthful more, Frank, and I have done); as you say, Mr Lisle, an honest sirloin is good enough.”

“Lodare il mare e passare par la terra!” said Grace.

“What’s that, Grace? Sir Toby and I, you know, never followed the tongues.”

“An Italian proverb you reminded me of, Uncle Walter. I will give you a free translation: “Praise the beef-steak, and feed on the canvas-backs.”

Mr Herbert finished the last of his “last morsels,” and turning to Mrs Esterly, said, “Now, honor-bright, Nelly, where did these ducks come from? They are the first of the season, and, therefore, alas! not for our money.”

“They were sent to us by a friend in Baltimore.”

“Ah, Lisle, there’s the secret out of our not dining on a joint. Truly, ‘a friend is the medicine of life.’ But, Grace, none of your arch smiles at me. I am neither gourmand, nor epicure, you know.”

“No, Uncle Walter, neither, but just genially on the verge of both!”

“Well! I am not transcendental.”

There was a twinkle from Walter Herbert’s eye, and a certain movement of his lips, which, contrasting with the massive strength and gravity of his countenance, gave an indescribable touch of humor to what he said. He excited laughter without indicating it. A smile went round the table at his disclaimer of transcendentalism. This perplexed Miss Adeline, who said in a low voice to Esterly, “I don’t feel as if it was right to laugh at the old gentleman – he’s rather broke, isn’t he?”

“Broke!” echoed Esterly, in a voice that reached Grace’s quick ear. Miss Clapp saw her exchange glances with him – she was nettled and said, “It’s not so very uncommon for old people to fail, though my grandfather, Captain Clapp, who was in the battle of Bunker Hill, is as bright as a dollar. You remember grandpa, Mr Lisle?”

“N – no – Yes, I beg your pardon, I do.”

“I thought so!” she retorted; and every one of her shining white teeth seemed to Lisle to express a triumph. “I was mistrusting it might impair the memory to travel, and see things – we, that stay at home, don’t forget.”

Why these commonest of common-placeisms should torture Lisle, the two sisters, who sat on each side of him, could not imagine; but he actually writhed, bit his nails, and crumbled to atoms a fragment of bread at his plate.

Grace interposed to shelter him from this teasing hailstorm of Miss Adeline’s. She plunged into the subject of art, a terra incognita to the pure native. In reply to some inquiry of Miss Herbert’s, Lisle said, “You can hardly imagine my Vandal ignorance on these subjects when I went abroad. I had been trained for practical life, and had been delving in hard work. I hardly knew the names of the old painters.”

“You know them, by your own showing, Lisle,” interposed Walter Herbert, “as well as one of my fine lady Fifth Avenue acquaintance, who asked me the other day to come and see her portrait, done by one of the old masters.”

“Pardon me, not quite so bad as that either, Mr Herbert. I had had glances into the world of art – some intimations of its immortalities. You may possibly remember, Miss Herbert, an evening I passed with you, in looking over a portfolio of fine engravings? Your comments were instructions – revelations to me – do you remember it?”

“Yes – I think,” replied Grace, hesitatingly; “yes, I do.” That evening had left but a faint shadowing in Grace’s memory. It was crystallized in Archibald Lisle’s. “You had spoken with enthusiasm,” he continued, “of Mrs Jameson’s book on Legendary Art. I bought it to study on my voyage.”

“A costly book for a hard-working young man!” said Uncle Walter.

“Yes; but I would rather have starved out the price of it than to have been without it. Mrs Jameson was born an artist, she has studied art, she has lived in it, she has the preternatural perceptions and enthusiastic love of the true artist, with a strong nature and rectifying common sense that preserve her from extravagances. She has genius without its eccentricities, which we of the working-day world, Mr Herbert, think not its concomitants, but its imperfections.”

“Yes, yes, you are right, Lisle; the mortality that impairs its divinity. But what more of this book? Miss Grace never thought me worthy of imparting it to me!”

“Because you confessed, sir,” said Grace, “that, like Sir Toby, you never loved the arts.”

“Never followed them, my dear – always quote Shakespeare as you quote Scripture, verbatim. But come, Lisle, what did Mrs Jameson do for you?”

“Everything that could be done for ignorance in so short a period. She developed my love of art – for, from the moment Miss Herbert touched the ashes, I was sure there was some fire in my soul to be uncovered. Mrs Jameson directed my observation, quickened my perception, imparted to me the laws of criticism, and instructed me in the legendary lore of the saints, martyrs, and heroes of the Churches, who have been the sources and subjects of the painters’ inspiration, so that when I saw their pictures, they were not hieroglyphical, but relaters of their own painful or glorious history. This, I am sure, was an immense extension of the enjoyment I should have had merely from the perfection of coloring and form; and this I owe to Mrs Jameson, who should be the guide of every traveler through Italy.”

“As she is the delight and consolation of those who can not travel through Italy,” said Grace.

An animated conversation ensued, in which many questions were asked about sculptures, painting, and music, and musical composers, and answered with intelligence and feeling, without a particle of pretension.

Walter Herbert took advantage of the first pause to turn the current of conversation. “You young people will consider me as old as a pre-Adamite,” he said, “if I tell you that I was born before art dawned upon the new world. Why, all you have been talking about would have been heathen Greek to your fathers and mothers. But I have sat at the feet of my niece, and learned; in my youth I knew no more of the names you have just repeated so glibly, than of the winged lions that clever man Layard is unearthing in the East. Now, if you put me to my mettle, I can talk with nine tenths of the young men and women, who have wasted winters in Paris and Rome, and they shall doubt my pretensions as little as they impose on me with theirs. But I have been edified more by your negative merit, Lisle, I confess, than anything else. I perceive that you are not one of those travelers that haunt our stupid dinners and talk mere parrotry – palming off upon us battered coin, from which the original impress is quite worn out – neither are you among those, who, having studied the classics at home become self-constituted and most self-complacent critics, and stand before the masterpieces, elaborating fine things to publish about them at home. But come, my dear fellow, tell us something of the living world – of ‘the million,’ who, after all, saving your presence, my dear Grace, interest me more than Michael Angelo, or Phidias.”

Then he showered upon Lisle questions as to the actual condition of the different nationalities of Europe, the character of its rulers, and the grounds of hope for its people. And Lisle, without dogmatizing, or professing to have made discoveries, gave the results of acute observation – sharpened by a republican education – and rare opportunities, in a manly tone, and with deep earnestness, showing he had been more occupied with the destiny of the living men of the present upheaving time, than with the art of past ages.

When Mr Herbert’s questions were answered, he said, “You must pardon me, Lisle, for boring you; but, really, it is refreshing to see a young man who has gone abroad for something beside seeing the dancers, and hearing the singers of the old world, or at best to pass their days in galleries and museums, and their nights at operas, for the vanity of talking about Guidos and Domenichinos, and Rossini, and Beethoven. I allow for a light in a dark place, for my ignorance makes your knowledge seem prodigious to me; but still the wonder grows, how you got so deep into the condition and character of these foreign people.”

“I fear,” modestly replied Lisle, “that I have been making a great show with a small stock, in the fashion of the shopmen, who display all their fine wares in their windows. I owe my small advantage over other travelers to what they would regard as a disqualification. I traveled in my home character of working man, who had neither time nor money to spend on mere pleasure.”

“And you did well, Lisle. I am, above all, glad to perceive your generous faith in the people of Europe, and your hope in their future. This is the true faith of a republican by conviction, as well as birthright.”

Why was it that Grace Herbert, who had no ignorant or fine-lady indifference to topics of such moment as these – why was it that she felt a sensation of immense relief when the conversation was suddenly stopped by the invasion of little May, who had been impatiently awaiting the signal for her admission? Why? – alas, the progress of our story will reveal.

“Here, May,” called out Uncle Walter, moving back from the table, and planting his knee for her. The bounding child sprang upon it. May looked as if all good angels had brought their gifts to her birthday; health and strength to her blooming cheek, and rounded and agile limbs, intelligence to her serene brow, gladness to her eyes, and love to her sweet lip. The “clouds of her immortality were yet trailing” around her. Archibald entered into an aside talk with her, to which she lent a gracious ear – children are instinctive physiognomists. “Will you give me that rosebud, May?” he asked.

“Oh, no Mr Lisle, I can’t give you that. Aunt Grace gave it to me, that’s why I keep it in my bosom.” Archibald looked at the rosebud with “fond and foolish thought.” He felt still the spell of the enchantress. His long absence, his manly struggles had not yet dispelled it.

“What are you thinking about, Mr Lisle?” asked May.

Archibald felt the color rush to his cheek, and for once he was relieved by Miss Clapp’s nasal voice –

“You will give the rosebud to me, won’t you, May?” she said.

“To you! – no, indeed.”

“Well, come to me a minute.”

The child shook her head decisively, and putting up her lips to Walter Herbert’s ear, and her hand before them, while she kept her eye fixed on Miss Adeline, she asked, “What has that lady got on her cheeks?”

Uncle Walter had the power of speaking, with scarcely a perceptible motion of his lips: “A piratical flag, my dear,” he answered. His reply was heard only by his next neighbors – Grace smiled, and Lisle murmured an involuntary assent.

“I don’t know what you mean, Uncle Walter,” said the perplexed child. Her attention was again claimed by Miss Clapp, who took from her reticule a pretty bon-bon, and held it up invitingly.

“Would you go to her?” asked May of her counselor.

“If I were you, I think I should.”

“If I were I, I think I should not,” retorted May.

“There!” exclaimed Uncle Walter, “a metaphysician would have studied a year without getting as much true philosophy as the child has hit upon.”

The signal was now made for the ladies to withdraw. May, not quite able to resist the temptation which Miss Adeline still held out, followed close to her rustling flounces, and was hardly in the entry, when she returned to Archibald with a little bunch of shriveled flowers elaborately bound, and tied in a love knot with pink ribbon. “That red lady sent you this,” she said, and skipped away.

“Blast it!” muttered Lisle, and threw it in the grate.

In half an hour the gentlemen came to the library, where the sisters were seated at their needlework. Stitching may be a hard necessity to the poor, but it is a boon to the rich; one of the compensations of lady-life. It helps to fill up the ennuyante vacuities in conversation, and makes endurable the infinite tediousness of egotistic visitors. Rousseau discovered one of its uses, and found a substitute for it. He played cup and ball in the drawing room; for, he says, “quand tout le monde est occupè, l’on ne parle que quand on a quelque chose à dire.”

“How have you disposed of Miss Clapp, of Clappville, Eleanor, our incubus?” asked her husband.

“She went off, lamenting an engagement to the opera.”

“Now that we are rid of the outside barbarian, Eleanor, send for our boy, and show him to Mr Lisle.”

“He is asleep, Frank; and if he were not, you know I only show off my children to those who are approaching second childhood.”

“You are right, Nelly – you always are,” said Uncle Walter. “Some one says no man comprehends the old poets till he is fifty. No doubt our baby is a Shakespeare, or Milton, not to be understood by you boys, Lisle. Poor Grace tried to make Copley admire your boy the other day, Esterly; but even his pliant lips refused a genuine smile.”

“Copley!” exclaimed Lisle; “Horace Copley! has he returned?”

“Yes.”

“Is he living in town? What is he doing?”

“Professing the ‘dolce far niente,’ his old business, Archibald.”

“He is everywhere a man of leisure,” replied Lisle, with a slight sarcasm in his tone.

“Angels only know how to employ leisure,” said Uncle Walter; “not mere men, certainly not an American man. Pray, Lisle, did you meet Copley abroad?”

“Yes, repeatedly; first in Paris, where I stayed but six months, then at Rome; he came for the Carnival, just as I was leaving it to go to Greece; and when I returned to Italy, he was amusing the English world in Naples with his duel.”

“His duel! we never heard of it. What was the occasion?”

“Oh, a trifling quarrel; neither party was killed, or even wounded, so it was but the gossip of a day.” Lisle was no retailer of gossip. We give what he suppressed, as characteristic of our fine gentlemen abroad. The duel was occasioned by a husband finding some costly jewels in the possession of his wife, who confessed they were given to her by Copley. She was a silly little English “lady in her own right,” whom her husband discreetly took home, and Copley transferred his devotion to a handsome French woman, whose husband would not have made a wry face, if Copley had bought all the trinkets in Naples for her. “Copley,” continued Lisle, “went off to Paris, and after my return from the Pyramids, I again met him there.”

“Pursuing his profession,” said Esterly. “‘Chacun à son goût.’”

“Surely,” interposed Grace, “there is enough in Paris to employ, for any length of time, any amount of intellect or taste. Our young men reside there for instruction in every department of science.”

“To which of these departments was Horace Copley devoted?” asked Esterly.

Grace did not reply – her thread tangled, and her needle unthreaded. The gentle Eleanor came to her relief. “I have been told,” she said, “that Mr Copley studied music scientifically in Paris.”

“Yes,” said Esterly, continuing the topic with, as Grace thought, irritating pertinacity, “he has favored us with intimations of his intimacy with Liszt, and Mendelssohn, and other musical geniuses, and his performance at a concert where there were royal guests!”

“Oh, Frank,” said Eleanor, “it was not Horace Copley who told us of the concert, it was Mrs Tallis.”

“And he is an accomplished musician, is he not?” said Lisle.

“I am not a competent judge,” replied Esterly; “but my sister can inform you; she is a particular friend of Mr Horace Copley.”

“Miss Herbert a particular friend of Copley!” rose to Archibald’s lips, but he restrained the words to an inarticulate sound, which unmistakeably expressed surprise.

Grace rallied – she thought her brother-in-law’s raillery persecution. “No competent judge,” she said, coolly, “who knows Mr Copley, doubts his musical accomplishment; he is not a man to stop short of excellence in anything he attempts.”

“A capital reason for attempting little,” rejoined Esterly.

To Grace’s unspeakable relief a servant opened the door, and said, “Miss Herbert, Mrs Tallis is waiting for you.”

Lisle was escorting Grace to Mrs Tallis’s carriage, when he encountered Copley awaiting her at the street door. The meeting of the young men was unexpected to both. Their greeting was civil, not cordial. When the carriage drove off, Copley asked Miss Herbert when Archibald Lisle returned?

“To town, two days since.”

“Archibald Lisle!” echoed Mr Tallis, who, for a wonder, was of the party with his wife.

“Archibald Lisle!” repeated the lady; “is he the young man who wrote something, or did something, that was talked of, a year or two ago.”

“Not that I ever heard of,” said Copley. “He is a mere lawyer, and as such was rather successful.”

“Oh yes, I know to what Madam alludes,” said Tallis. Tallis always called his wife “Madam” when he was out of humor. “Lisle was at this opera house on the night of a famous riot, and behaved with gallantry – something beyond a mere lawyer, Mr Copley. Afterward, he appeared in court, in his vocation, for a young man who had been drawn into the riot. The lad was an Irishman, and after his acquittal, his Irish heart burst bounds, and he told the court that Lisle had volunteered to defend him, while the young gentleman’s bones were still aching with a smashing blow he gave him, ‘maning no harm!’ I chanced to be in court at the time,” continued Tallis, “and I hardly knew which most to admire, the cleverness of the defense, or the young man’s modesty, when a general observation was turned upon him.”

“Lisle has rather a taste for that sort of thing,” said Copley.

“What sort of thing?” asked Tallis, petulantly.

“Oh that, exactly – standing between poor devils and their just retribution. I do not know, but I would bet that he is a believer in mesmerism, spiritualism, homeopathy, and hydropathy – that he is an anti-slavery, anti-tariff, anti-capital punishment man.”

“That is altogether what they call ‘socialism,’ is it not?” asked Mrs Tallis.

“Don’t talk about what you do not understand, Mrs T,” said her husband, with conjugal courtesy. “I will venture to say that Mr Lisle believes nothing that has not a foundation of sense. He is not made of the stuff that runs to humbug.”

Arrived at the opera house, the party went to a private box, so-called, but really so only as it permitted a partial obscurity to one or two persons. We have not inherited the English love of privacy. We are as jealous of “closed doors” in private as in public life, and all attempts at exclusiveness prove abortive. Our New York opera house is a tolerable approximation to Parisian taste and gaiety. Loves and Graces are vivaciously floating on rose-colored clouds, and in azure fields. It is brilliantly lighted, and on this particular night it was sparkling with pretty and elegant, and, for the most part, very young women, with the fashionable, picturesque cloaks of the season, half covering the bare and jeweled neck. The youngest talked the loudest. Young men, with neckcloths of faultless tie and well-tended moustaches, were in attendance. The house was crowded, thanks that evening to the presence of a fashionable prima donna; but that our musical entertainments are usually crowded, is an unquestionable proof that our people have an unaffected love of music, and a growing acquaintance with its divine harmonies. Tallis was not in a happy humor, and he rather disturbed Grace with his cynical remarks, “Look at Jo. Osborne, Miss Herbert,” he said, “he comes every night to the opera, with about as much ear for music as Bully Bottom – or I. Hear Phil. Dayton’s bravoes! He does not know a bass from a tenor.”

“Good heavens! Rupert, how disagreeable you are!” said his wife.

“Oh, I do well enough with opera sauce – a good condiment for a dull husband.”

Copley sat behind Mrs Tallis, and next to Grace. He leaned toward her and whispered, “Bad taste this! One should not betray a consciousness of the conjugal yoke, though it gall. Polite indifference is the proper succedaneum [substitute] to love.”

Grace did not reply, or smile. She looked at Rupert Tallis and sighed. She knew his petulance was on the surface, that there was sadness and disappointment, and much worth in his heart. He had resumed his eyeglass and was reconnoitering the house. “There is Lisle!” he exclaimed.

“Where, where, Rupert?” asked his wife.

“There in the parquet – near the Selby Smiths. Upon my word, one’s air does improve by traveling; he has grown stouter – a nice-looking fellow.”

“Quite stylish,” said Mrs Tallis, “well-dressed – is he not, Copley?”

“I am not an observer of dress,” said Copley.

“Madam believes him!” whispered Tallis, sneeringly, to Grace.

“Who can that very pretty girl be, in half mourning, to whom Mr Lisle is talking?” asked Mrs Tallis.

The eyes of the Tallis party were now turned to the “very pretty girl.” ‘A child’s face in simplicity, a woman’s in sadness,’ thought Grace.

“Mr Lisle seems on a very cordial footing with her,” replied Grace to Mrs Tallis’s inquiry. “She belongs to those old people, I think – they are moving to go away.”

“Why,” said Mrs Tallis, “the old man is Steinberg, you know, Grace – the old German that keeps such nice music in his little shop in Canal Street. Your friend Lisle is evidently urging them to stay – quite a little pantomime.” If Lisle had urged, he had urged in vain, for the party withdrew. Lisle returned and resumed his place, but not to possess it in patience or peace. Grace recognized the flashing of Miss Adeline Clapp’s silk, as, attended by an old gentleman, whom she partly led and partly shoved, she pushed through the black coats that filled the middle passage of the parquet to the place vacated by Archibald’s friends. “Oh, Mr Lisle!” she exclaimed, dropping into the seat beside him, “was not I lucky to spy you out? Doctor Dayton was so kind as to bring me to the opera. Dr Dayton – Mr Lisle! The poor old gentleman is getting sleepy, and you know I can’t go away till I hear Salvi in the last act; and I told the doctor you would see me home – good night, doctor!”

Poor Archibald, without the grace of a cheerful resignation, told Miss Adeline in a tone of unaffected solemnity, “that he had an engagement immediately after the opera, but he would with pleasure put her into a carriage.”

Grace came to the front of her box for the last act. Archibald’s eye turned to her as a Persian’s to the rising sun. The music and Miss Herbert’s presence were in harmony. Adeline Clapp’s incessant clatter was like the pestering buzz of a mosquito. Grace was rather amazed at what seemed to her but an impertinent persecution on the part of a vulgar rustic. She thought Lisle weakly yielded to it, when, at the door of the opera house, she saw him follow Miss Clapp into a hackney coach. Her surprise would have been bestowed on the lady, if she had heard her say, “Not coming with me, Archy?”

“Pardon me, Miss Clapp – I can not.”

“You don’t mean so! I shall be frightened out of my senses to go alone with the coachman – don’t shut the door – don’t – I will get out and walk home alone, if you don’t feel to go with me.” There was no alternative. Lisle yielded to fate.

Chapter 15

“And common is the common place,

And vacant chaff, well-meant for grain.”

Tennyson

Of the many discords of domestic life, those that proceed from uncongeniality are most common.

Grace Herbert and her stepmother never quarreled, neither did they bespatter their lives with bickerings; they were both too well bred, but they had no sympathy, and therefore no reciprocal happiness. Mrs Herbert had a perennial equanimity of temper, partly constitutional, and partly sustained by self-complacency, and a kindly disposition. Grace was tormented with self-dissatisfaction, partly from the pressure of high aspirations, and partly from a well grounded discontent with her own mode of life.

Mrs Herbert studied Grace’s happiness and convenience in her domestic arrangements, and made known, but not unknown sacrifices to it. She never conferred a benefit without the particulars of its cost.

“Take the carriage, Grace, by all means,” she would say; “to be sure I did intend going out, but I always enjoy making a little sacrifice.” And, “I have invited your friend so-and-so today; it is slightly inconvenient as the cook is away, but I can order a dish or two from Weller’s. I do not mind a small extra expense to give you a pleasure.” Expenses were lavished and not spoken of, when her own daughter’s, Miss Anne Carlton’s pleasures were in question. So easy it is to float on the virtues for which nature has made the channels.

Mrs Herbert was perpetually in action, doing something, or suggesting something to be done, a disposition annoying to one of Grace’s rather indolent temperament, who, lapsed into her own world of imagination, was disturbed, if not fretted by Mrs Herbert’s incessant materialities.

She came into Grace’s room on the morning after the opera, with a French engraving elaborately framed. “My dear Grace,” she said, “I have bought you a picture to hang in the place of that old discolored Madonna by your bedside, and then instead of that old-fashioned table under it, do place there the one Anne gave you at Christmas.”

Mrs Herbert seldom entered Grace’s room, but when she did, she was sure to suggest some new arrangement of its furniture, that rather amused than annoyed her. On this occasion, instead of the sudden irradiation of countenance, Mrs Herbert naturally expected from her gift Grace’s brow clouded. She rose slowly and said, with some hesitation, “If you please, Mrs Herbert, I will hang the picture in my library;” and she opened the door into a small room where she kept her books.

“It’s quite out of sight here, nobody will see it; but, of course, if you prefer it so, it’s your own, and you know I make it a point never to interfere with your preferences.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” replied Grace, and conscious how tardy and how cold were her thanks for the picture, she now expressed them.

“Oh, don’t say a word; I was buying some new pictures for Anne’s room, and I thought it would but make the bill a little larger to get this for you. I might have felt it by itself. But Grace,” she added, “since you seem to set a value on that shabby old picture, I will have it newly framed for you; it really looks dingy on your new paper.”

“You are very kind, ma’am,” said Grace, “but pray let the old picture remain just as it is.” Mrs Herbert was not offended; she was not sensitive. She only mentally added one item to the great account of Grace’s oddity, and entered a credit to her own magnanimity. She had scarcely gone, and closed the door, when she reopened it. Grace hastily wiped blinding tears from her eyes.

“You will go to Mrs Tallis’s reception with Anne and me, this morning, Grace?”

“Excuse me, Mrs Herbert – I detest receptions.”

“But, dear Grace, really it is your duty to go. There are certain observances that a young lady in your position can not omit without remark. The consequence of omitting these minor duties is serious – the sacrifice small. Mrs Tallis’s receptions occur but once a month. There may be some insuperable obstacle to your going on the next occasion. Opportunities seldom recur.”

“There’s comfort in that,” murmured Grace.

“We can do our duties to society,” resumed the incessant woman, “without interfering with our other duties. My housekeeping is pretty thorough. Few ladies keep the run of the new publications, magazines, and so forth, better than I, and, I don’t boast of my charities – far from it – but you know, my dear, I hold office in six charitable societies; so you see one may keep up with society, without trenching upon higher obligations.”

“I’ll go, I’ll go!” exclaimed Grace at the first pause. Mrs Herbert produced an effect on her, analogous to the monotonous dropping of water on the head. Again, to Grace’s infinite relief, she shut the door, and Grace turned musingly to the old picture, saying mentally, “I would not exchange it for all the galleries of Italy! And put Anne’s French thing in the place of my mother’s work table! Oh I still see her sitting by it, and still feel the tapping of her pale, thin fingers, when she would call me her ‘meddlesome Matty.’” The dingy print was Raphael’s “Madonna della Seggiola.” Grace’s last recollection of her mother was of her hanging this picture beside her crib, and then folding her in her arms, while she murmured a prayer. Time had interpreted the action, and the vision of her parent was blended with the glorification of maternity in the sweet Virgin mother. Grace should have simply told the fact to Mrs Herbert – Eleanor would have done so, Grace could not. How subtly are the elements of character commingled and diversified!

Grace thus reports the “reception” in the following letter to Alice Clifford:

Dear Alice:

When I think that schoolgirls’ friendships are, for the most part, mere accidents of propinquity, I rejoice that ours, like all true matches, was foreordained. I began with making you my pet, I believe you are five years my junior, and now you are my confidante – partly, because you are true as steel, and will not betray what I tell you, and partly that you will not advise me, or chide me; and you are unmarried – kind to kind, is natural. Perhaps you will divine that I am trying to silence my conscience that tells me my sister Eleanor should be my confidante; that a sister – and such a sister! – is the nearest friend, the friend Heaven bestowed; and truly Eleanor would be my elect friend from all the world, but that she is married. She has projected herself into another self, and, though two make one for themselves, they make two for the rest of us.

I was forced to a matinée yesterday morning, my dear Alice. The fashion of matinées, or morning receptions, was unknown in our school-days at dear Monsieur Canda’s, but they may, by this time, have reached the utmost limit of our social civilization. The circles are concentric; we of this overgrown city pertaining to the innermost, throw a fashion in here, and, plash, every circle is correspondent to the remotest inland town. Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chicago may have their matinées by this time – follies catch, like ‘fire on the mountains.’

‘Let me take you,’ in mesmeric fashion, to one of these fashionable gatherings. The carriage is at the door. I propose walking, but am prevented by one of my stepmother’s eternal remonstrances, ‘Dear Grace, you have on a carriage-dress – it is not the custom to walk to matinées. And you know, if Anne and I drive, and you walk, it has an appearance, and people will observe. I have heard that, in London, servants are often impertinent to visitors who come on foot,’ etc., etc. So, dear Alice, we are not only to be moulded by the customs of London fine people, but by the notions of London footmen. I yielded – I always do – not gracefully, for I sat in sullen silence, annoyed at losing the enjoyment of the glorious winter’s day. The air was clear and crisp – iced champagne – not a city odor in the atmosphere. People walked as if freshly charged with life; old age was quickened, and smiling; even the little beggars, with their alms baskets, filled or empty it mattered not which, instead of sadly sniveling on alone, and dropping stealthily into the areas, were shouting along in merry companies, or pitching pennies in playful groups. Truly, Alice, if I had followed my bent, I would rather have partaken of their rags and their glee, than to share the chattering of Anne Carlton and her mother, and to be bound up in their most insipid life.

But we are at Mrs Tallis’s door, in the Fifth Avenue. Half a dozen equipages, more or less splendid, precede us, and while we await our turn, Uncle Walter, leaning on Archibald Lisle’s arm, joins us – A.L. is an old friend of your family. Of course you know all about him. But perhaps you do not know how prodigiously Uncle Walter takes to him.

‘Lisle has been supporting me,’ he said; ‘I can bear a grip from my old enemy’ – poor uncle is suffering with a twinge of the gout – ‘with such a staff to lean upon. Come, Lisle, go into Mrs Tallis’s with us.’

Mr Lisle declined. I earnestly seconded Uncle Walter, but Mr Lisle, though he seemed well inclined to yield to my intreaties, persisted, alleging that he belonged to the working world, and could not indulge in such luxuries as matinées. Luxuries! Oh, Alice, what a diamond fountain in the desert would such a man be in our fashionable society!

“Just as it came to our turn to alight, ‘There is Mr Copley and Sam Belson!’ exclaimed Anne Carlton. ‘Oh, mamma, look at Horace Copley’s new turn out. Is it not splendid? Why, they are stopping! What lovely horses! Oh I do so hope they are going in!’ Copley offered me his arm; Belson gave his to Anne. We advanced slowly, for Mrs Herbert was before us with Uncle Walter, who made slow progress with his gouty feet. Mr Lisle was walking lingeringly away. I met his eye as he looked back. I felt annoyed that he should have seen Horace Copley, whom I know he distrusts, in company with Sam Belson, a dissipated, idle – fashionable! – fellow. ‘Auh, Mr Belson,’ drawled out Anne Carlton, in a coaxing tone, ‘come in with us; it’s so nice at a reception, if we can have two or three gentlemen – distingués, you know! Mrs Tallis says it’s such a bore when there are only ladies.’ Both gentlemen declined; Copley assigning his dread of entanglement in the meshes of a reception. The drawing room door was ajar. Mrs Tallis, hearing Copley’s voice, came to the door and urged these gentlemen to enter; they persisted, and she seemed piqued and much nettled, when, on her rëentering, Mrs Milnor – a regular gossip, compounded of ear and tongue – said, ‘How quick one hears some voices. I sat close by the door, but I did not recognize Mr Copley’s!’

I found a seat near Julia Travers. You remember what a little earnest student she was at Monsieur Canda’s. She is just as earnest now at the best tasks of life. Uncle Walter, who had lingered at the landing of the marble staircase, to look at a very tolerable fresco copy of Guido’s Aurora, joined us. Mrs Milnor laid her hand on his arm, he shrunk from her touch. He is as electrical as a cat, and can not endure contact with a person to whom he is antagonistic. Nothing daunted by his repulsion, she asked him, in an eager tone, if he knew who the lady was sitting silent at the other end of the room?

‘Is anyone silent in this Babel?’ replied Uncle Walter, without more directly honoring the question.

‘How funny you always are, Mr Herbert! I mean the lady in the lemon-colored silk, with a green bonnet, and scarlet geraniums, who sits under the Cupid and Psyche?’

‘The Cupid and Psyche!’ echoed Uncle Walter. ‘Ah, Grace, do you know, the other day I brought our May here to see Mrs Tallis’s little girl. She looked round upon all the fine things, absolutely confounded, till, her eye lighting on that group, her Scripture lessons came to her aid, and she said, “I know that, Uncle Walter – I know that! It’s Jacob wrestling with the Angel.’”

‘Dear little innocent!’ exclaimed Mrs Milnor; ‘it may not harm children to see naked figures; but, surely, Mr Herbert, at your age, you can’t approve of it. (Uncle Walter did not look any more propitious for this reference to his age.) There’s a Ganymede on the opposite side – how perfectly demoralizing! There now, Miss Herbert, that lady is bowing to you. You must know her?’

‘Yes, I have that honor – Miss Adeline Clapp.

‘Oh, I almost knew it was she,’ said Mrs Milnor. ‘Is Miss Clapp engaged to Mr Lisle?’

‘I really am not favored with her confidence,’ I replied.

‘Archibald Lisle engaged to Miss Clapp!’ murmured Uncle Walter, with an expression of irrepressible contempt.

‘Well, I have it on very good authority,’ retorted Mrs Milnor. ‘Miss Clapp as good as told a particular friend of mine that she is engaged to Mr Lisle.’ Uncle Walter and I exchanged glances. Mrs Milnor perceived she had succeeded in fixing our attention.

‘I really think,’ she continued, ‘that if that young woman is interested in young Lisle, some one ought to tell her what was told me about him.’

‘What, in heaven’s name, was told you, madam?’ asked Uncle Walter, now unable to conceal his interest, or even to moderate it.

“‘Oh, I should not like to spread the report; but of course you will be discreet.’ And perceiving, with evident satisfaction, that there were three persons within reach of her lowered voice, she proceeded: ‘You know that little music shop in Canal Street, kept by old Steinberg. It has been there forever. There is no one lives in the house but the old man and his wife. When Lisle returned from abroad, he brought a very pretty young girl there. There he visits her every day; and a friend of mine met him driving out with her. Old Steinberg and his wife are respectable; but, then, you know, foreigners never think anything of such things. It is really too true, as one of my friends says, when our young men go abroad, they do as the Romans do, and what is worse, when they come home they do as the Romans do.’

So far, Uncle Walter maintained silence. ‘From whom did you get this trumpery, madam?’ he now asked.

‘Trumpery! Mr Herbert. I don’t call truth trumpery. I can assure you I have good authority. My sempstress lives next door to the Steinbergs, and she has eyes; and besides, if you will insist upon proof – the other day I went into Steinberg’s with Sam Belson, and we both saw Mr Lisle in the back room, talking with this young girl. Now, really, Miss Clapp should have a hint of this.’

‘Certainly; and perhaps you had best apply to your immaculate friend, Belson, to give it,’ said Uncle Walter, and walked off, muttering one of those epithets which men lavish on women gossips; whom they consider ‘cursed above all cattle.’ ‘I confess I should like to have this matter cleared up, for I have some reason for fearing these surmises are not quite without foundation.’

After all, this Mrs Milnor, gossip though she be, par excellence, and absolute nuisance, is not the worst of women. She makes herself a common sewer, through which the idle rumors of the idle town run. She tells you of the last death, and the last engagement, the feelings of the mourners, and the motives of the betrothed. She publishes the freshest discovery of a flaw in a married woman’s character, and gives – always ‘on the best authority’ – the first intimation of the possible ruin of a dear friend’s husband, or son. But is she who furnishes the supply worse than they who create the demand? Does the gossip, dear Alice, differ from her willing listener, save in more loquacity, and less caution. But pardon my prosing; I go into society without enjoyment, and when I come home, I moralize without profit.

I told you I was sitting next Julia Travers, ‘a handsome plain lady,’ as Mrs Herbert’s man, John, calls her – Julia and I were friends; but, alas, our paths have widely diverged. I wanted to speak to her of Copley, but, like a coward, I began indirectly with, ‘Emily Smythe has sent me a programme of Mrs Seton’s entertainment on Thursday. Mrs Tallis, and your cousin, Horace Copley, are to lead off a new dance.’ She made no reply; and I added, ‘Mrs Tallis rather defies public censure.’

She coolly replied, ‘I scarcely know Mrs Tallis. I am here this morning by accident.’

‘And you do not go to Mrs Seton’s, Julia?’

‘No, Grace, you know I never go to parties.’

‘Do you condemn them?’

‘For myself, I do. The late hours do not suit me; and I must take care of my health, that being essential to me.’

‘And, of course, Julia, what is not fitting for you, is not fitting for others?’

‘That is not my conclusion, Grace. I feel my own life to be quite charge enough. I do not undertake to regulate the lives of others.’

‘You are very odd,’ I said. ‘Most people are generous enough to give their exclusive care to their neighbors’ concerns. I do go to parties, Julia. One can not turn hermit at two and-twenty, and parties, and receptions, and their edifying accessories make up our social life, you know. I dance the redowa and waltzes, and polkas. All this, I am quite sure, is contrary to your notions.’

She smiled with a pensive gravity (that spoke no admonition, but left one on my conscience), and said, ‘We must all keep our own accounts, dear Grace.’

‘And pretty poor accountants young women are!’ said a certain Mrs Hall, who had drawn near, and was listening; and who, the opposite of Julia Travers, is a self-constituted ‘judge in all matters and things.’ ‘Waltzing,’ she continued, ‘is bad enough – even Lord Byron could not stand that; but polking is perfectly horrid. I heard a young woman with my own ears – she a wife, and a mother, too – say to Horace Copley, that the black off his coat had soiled the corsage of her dress. What do you think of that, Miss Herbert?’

‘That it probably was a mistake, ma’am; as I fancy Mr Copley does not wear coats from which the “color comes off.” I am engaged, Mrs Hall, for a polka at Miss Seton’s ball, and I will promise you that my white tulle shall have no soil upon it; neither, I trust, will my reputation.’

‘Oh, if you are engaged to Mr Copley, as the world says,’ retorted the coarse woman, ‘I don’t say there’s any harm in your polking with him.’

I am sure Julia Travers felt the blush that burned my cheek, as suddenly rising, she whispered, ‘Don’t, dear Grace, polk with my cousin Horace.’ I would have sprang after her to ask, ‘Is it to the polka, or to your cousin Horace, that you object?’ but even I dare not follow out such an impulse at a matinée.

I was recalled to my surroundings by Mrs Hall. ‘I heard you observe,’ she said, ‘that Miss Travers was “odd.” She is, decidedly. What does she come to receptions for, with her pretensions. Even I never do voluntarily. I was caught this morning.’

‘Then, madam,’ said Uncle Walter, who had again returned to my side, ‘you have been betrayed into choice company. One does not often meet Miss Travers.’

‘I do not admire her. It is not a good sign for a young woman to cut and carve a way of life for herself. All the Traverses are odd.’

‘I quite agree with you, Mrs Hall,’ said Anne Carlton. ‘Julia Travers is decidedly odd, though a very nice girl, you know; clever, and charitable, and all that sort of thing.’

‘Pray, Miss Anne,’ said Uncle Walter, ‘what do you mean by odd?’

‘Oh, now, Mr Herbert, as if you did not know what odd means. I always did hate definitions at school. Why, odd, you know, means – odd.’

Uncle Walter put up his quizzical lips, as if to whistle. Mrs Hall came to the rescue of the foolish girl. ‘Mr Herbert is teazing you, Miss Anne,’ she said. ‘He knows well enough what you mean. It’s ridiculous for a girl of Miss Travers’s age to stand apart, and say, “I am holier than thou.” You know, Mr Herbert, it is absurdly odd for a girl of her fortune to be Visitor at the Half Orphan, and Manager of the Colored Orphan Asylum! To drill little negro children! I hear she has her mornings for receiving her poor.’ (Dear Julia, think of her modest charities being so pounced upon by this bird of prey.)

‘Quite a Sister of Charity!’ ejaculated Anne, glancing at her own handsome image in an opposite mirror, and smoothing down her ermine.

‘As to charities, subscribing to societies, and being kind to the poor, that’s all right,’ said Mrs Hall; ‘but as to making it a profession, that is only suitable for a spinster of forty or fifty.’

‘Or for an unoccupied widow?’ mischievously suggested Uncle Walter.

‘Yes,’ retorted Mrs Hall, ‘if she fancy self-glorification. I confess I do not. I quite agree with you, Miss Carlton. Miss Travers is every way odd. When she goes to the country, she walks eight or ten miles a day – I should not wonder if she wore a Bloomer.’

‘How very unfeminine,’ piped Anne.

‘Yes, she is every way singular,’ pursued Mrs Hall. ‘She has gone off to the Swedenborgians, or some other absurd sect.’

‘Presumed to do her own thinking. Very odd,’ said Uncle Walter.

‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Mrs Hall, growing red, ‘it’s worse – it’s presumptious for any young woman to start off into a new faith, instead of humbly adhering to that she was brought up in, and which her parents will answer for, and not she.’

I ventured to put in my oar, and told Mrs Hall that it was a cousin of Miss Travers who had committed the absurdity of changing her faith.

‘Ah, so it was,’ she said. ‘Julia Lowe; but I fancy that without that little particular, I have made out my case.’

‘And yet, dear Mrs Hall,’ said Anne, ‘you have not mentioned half her odd ways. She dresses, you know, quite in a style of her own.’

‘Simple, and becoming, is it not Anne?’ said Uncle Walter.

‘Mr Herbert is laughing at you,’ said Mrs Hall, and with an uneasy consciousness that she partook his ridicule, and that her shafts had fallen short of their aim, she went off to another apartment.

‘How very clever Mrs Hall is!’ ejaculated Anne. Certain qualities, Alice, are ascribed to certain persons, and always reiterated at the mention of their names by the parrots of society. And Mrs Hall is clever, if a quick perception of the absurdities of her fellow creatures, and a coarse portraiture of them are clever. She had faculties that might have blessed her generation, and provided for this late period of her life the solaces ‘that wait on age.’ Instead of this, she lives, for the most part, in retirement without repose, brooding on follies she has no temptation to commit, and vituperating vices to which she was never exposed. She withdraws from our fashionable society, not from superiority, but defect of sympathy. She pours contempt upon all social arrangements, but has none of her own. She has achieved her reputation by not letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would.’ She was early cut off from the dearest ties of life, and relieved from its ordinary duties. She had no child of her own. But was there none she might have succored? Were there none ignorant, she might have instructed? None fallen, she might have raised? Was there no barren field she might have sown, and now be binding her golden sheaves – a sister of mercy, like Julia Travers, instead of the withered, bitter thing she is.

While Uncle Walter was amusing himself, talking sense or laughing at folly – Uncle Walter can always pick an oily meat out of the shell of society – and my stepmother – who has a universal toleration for the wearers of velvet and ermine – was protracting her visit, I wandered about the fine apartments, examining marble statues, and groupes in bronze; Sèvres, and Etruscan vases, a real Turner, Landseers, and Schaeffers, and yet but half enjoying them amidst stereotype discussions of possible engagements, and actual weddings, and all that goes before and after. Profound questions were agitated, such as, whether Mr Seville gave his daughter her bridal diamonds, or whether they were presented by her lover? Whether a certain ‘most lovely brocade’ were imported by its wearer, or bought at Stewart’s? Whether the last English nobleman afloat among us, said Miss Brown was the most beautiful woman he ever saw, and Miss Smith the most graceful, or vice versâ? Whether Horace Copley danced four or six times with Mrs Tallis at the ‘bachelors’ breakfast?’ I did linger listening when this question arose; it was decently debated in low tones, and I was suddenly cut off from it by that odious Miss Clapp, who came tramping up to me to ask after Eleanor, as if she were her intimate friend.

‘What a pleasant dinner we had there,’ she said. ‘A dear lovely child her May is – but a little saucy – don’t you think so? Eleanor – (Eleanor! – how dare she) – dresses so sweetly. I admired her lavender poplin, so suitable for a clergyman’s wife. Archibald Lisle seemed very much depressed; don’t you think so?’ She paused, and I answered that ‘I thought him in excellent spirits.’

‘Now did you? Well, you have not known him as long as I have. He used to be as lively as a cricket. But of course he feels the old gentleman’s death, and then, as I have reason to know, he left his family destitute; and his widow has to turn every which way to get on; and I daresay Archy feels for her, though he is but a stepson. You seem to be very absent, Miss Grace,’ she continued, obtuse as she is, observing my apparent listlessness, ‘but I can excuse it; I know, that in your situation, it would plague me to hear people talk, as they do, about a certain gentleman’s flirtation with a certain married lady.’

‘Dear me!’ exclaimed a Mrs Melsy, who passes for the best-natured woman in society – a mere vitiated sweet – ‘how critical people are! I am sure I can not see any harm in gentlemen offering little pleasant gallantries to married ladies, and married ladies accepting them. It’s very hard to turn them over to us old ladies while they are young, and as handsome as Mrs Tallis is – a certain gentleman is so fascinating, and she did not marry for love, poor thing!’

‘Take care,’ said Miss Adeline, nudging Mrs Melsy, and pointing to little Elise Tallis who sat on my knee, examining the charms on my watch chain, ‘take care, “little pitchers have big ears!’”

The child had probably had the vulgar adage expounded to her, for she looked up archly, and called out to her mother, ‘Mamma, the ladies are talking about you!’

‘What good or evil are you speaking of me, dear ladies?’ asked Mrs Tallis, approaching us.

‘I can tell you, mamma; they said you were handsome, and you did not love papa, and ever so much about a gentleman – I guess they meant Mr Copley.’

‘Hush, you little fool!’ said her mother.

‘Why, what a little Pickle it is!’ said Mrs Melsy; ‘we were only saying –’

Oh, Alice! my cheeks had been growing hotter and hotter as these women brought into the marketplace, and bandied between them, the secret tormenting disquietudes that I have hardly the courage to confess to myself, and never to intimate to another. I said something about Uncle Walter being waiting for me, and pushing my way between Mrs Melsy and Miss Clapp, I rushed from drawing room to drawing room, through the whole suite of apartments, library, conservatory, boudoir, and all, looking for Mrs Herbert or my Uncle Walter, and seeing neither, and coming upon the grand staircase, I took flight by myself. Could I have acted more absurdly if I had been but fifteen? I left them, no doubt – those silly women, and Mrs Tallis – persuaded that I am a lovesick, jealous girl. Well, the farce – tragedy it seemed to me – was not quite ended. At the door-step I met Horace Copley. He could not fail to see my agitation. I stood for an instant confused and hesitating. He gazed steadily in my face, but made no inquiry or comment. He never says or does a thing that another man would – perhaps this is in part the secret of his indefinable power over me. He told me he had just come to Mrs Tallis’s door in the hope of meeting me. He came home with me. He did not speak once during our walk. Yes, once. We met Archibald Lisle; he made a mis-step in passing, and nearly fell to the pavement. ‘A blundering fellow!’ exclaimed Copley. The exclamation was natural enough, but there was something in his tone that, now that I recall it, does not please me. Copley followed me to our drawing room. The piano was open, and we both went to it as if by a common instinct. He had left his flute here the day before. He asked me to play some of his favorite airs – he accompanied me. He plays exquisitely – always Italian music – I love better the German – and usually that which is the fashion of the day.

Suddenly – oh, Alice! I could not tell you this if you were not a hundred miles from me – while we were singing that thrilling duet from Don Giovanni, ‘La ci darem la mano,’ he threw down his flute, seized both my hands, and gazed in my eyes with a passionate tenderness I never saw in his before; I withdrew my hands, he exclaimed, ‘My head is giddy!’ and rushed out of the house.

My heart bounded, as at a release, as the outer door closed after him – truly, truly, Alice!

You may think I deceive myself when I confess, that I burst into tears, and that I actually did not hear my Uncle Walter’s heavy step till he was before me, followed by Mrs Herbert.

‘Why, here you are, my dear child – why! – what has happened?’

‘Nothing, sir – nothing.’

‘Nothing that you will tell – that means!’ and then laying his dear old hand on my head – oh there is a benediction in its touch, Alice – he kissed me, and whispered, ‘God help you, my dear child – I can’t.’

Yours ever, dearest Alice,

G.H.

P.S. Of one thing I am morally certain. Copley never looked at Mrs Tallis, never spoke to her, as he looked and spoke to me this morning.

Poor Grace! Horace Copley breakfasted with Mrs Tallis that morning, before her doors were thrown open to the world. He had flattered her, till the heightened color in her cheek put out, as he said, the roses in the bouquet he had brought her, labeled, “Pour la rose de vingt-cinq ans.”

But Grace was not deceived. There could not be a stronger contrast than between his ardent, steady gaze in Mrs Tallis’s beautiful face, and the perplexed look of blended hope and fear, of homage and love, that he raised to Grace’s face; between his assured tone to the married woman’s greedy ear, and the tremulous voice of curbed passion, in which he said truly, “My head is giddy.”

Chapter 16

“And now I confess myself fairly puzzled; I suppose I ought to describe this ball; but what points am I to seize on, by which to distinguish it from a ball anywhere? There is not a dress or a costume of any kind that differs a particle from those in London or Paris.” So writes Mr Paget of a ball in Hungary; and so may be said of a ball in the upper circles of New York.

Grace entered Mrs Herbert’s drawing room, dressed for Mrs Seton’s ball, just as her uncle was rising from a prolonged game of picquet with her stepmother. He turned his delighted eyes upon his niece, and commended her dress. It was of white crape, decorated only with a wreath of lilies of the valley, fastened to the waist, and looping up the skirt on one side. She wore a wreath of the same flowers around her head, drooping, as was then the fashion, to her neck. The white long stems of lilies were neither whiter nor purer than the stately, smooth throat they defined and set off. “It is a pretty dress,” said Mrs Herbert, in reply to Walter Herbert’s commendation of its simplicity and elegance; “but as you have worn it twice this winter, dear, I am sorry you did not accept the new one I offered to you – this will be the ball of the season.”

Grace felt herself often compelled to a conformity to the Vanity Fair she lived in; but in the momentous article of the toilet she adhered to her own creed, and maintained her self-respect in spite of the wordy batteries of her stepmother. “I should be so happy to give you a new dress, my dear,” she would say, for this ball or that reception. “It really pains me to think of the remarks that may be made of the disparity between yours and Anne’s dress. If you would only accept a set of laces like Anne’s.” But Grace had perseveringly declined these gracious aids, and had turned a deaf ear to the repeated suggestions of “how easy it would be for her, if she would only give her mind to it, to imitate the trimmings of Anne’s French hats, or to embroider collars or pocket handkerchiefs like Anne’s.” Grace was persistent in her opinion, that there was a certain dignity in wearing a dress correspondent to the fortune of the wearer; and she held her time – though not flattering herself with any very valuable results from it – at too dear a rate to be wasted in emulations of French milliners and Parisian embroiderers. And further, in the excessive luxury of dress, and the striving after its paltry distinction, pervading all classes, from the “Mrs Potiphars” to the housemaid (up or down?) Grace saw something parvenue, and, in honest English, vulgar. So conscience and pride both sustained her in a simplicity, which Anne Carlton whispered, “did very well for Grace, as everyone called her a ‘classic beauty,’ and she was of that odd kind.” Miss Carlton had no very lucid ideas of the classic.

“Wear this dress as often as you can, Grace,” said Mr Herbert, resuming the conversation where Mrs Herbert had dropped it; “it’s quite perfect – no furbelows – not an ornament.”

“Except a meek and quiet spirit, Uncle Walter.”

“No, my Grace, that fell to Eleanor in the division of your mother’s jewels.”

“True enough! But, Uncle Walter, you have not noticed the bracelet you gave me,” she said, raising her arm lovingly to her uncle’s shoulder; “perhaps it is a talisman, and not an ornament?”

“May it prove so, my child – preserving you from folly and mischance; it’s an odd old thing,” he added, turning it on her arm, as if examining the gems that were curiously inwrought with the gold.

“Quite an antique!” said Mrs Herbert. “How fortunate, the present rococco style! One can wear one’s heirlooms. It was strange of your grandmother, brother, to will you those bracelets; how came it?”

“I don’t know. She bequeathed them to me, with an injunction to give them to my wife.”

“Then there were a pair? I remember seeing poor Fanny wear one when she was a bride – what became of the fellow to it?”

Walter Herbert made no reply. The bracelet had called up memories of a fair young arm on which he had clasped its fellow, of a soft, loving, trusting eye that had looked into his heart the while – of hopes, perished long ago! His sister-in-law’s voice made no more impression on him than the simmering of the gas. He started away from Grace, and walked to the window, and casting off these haunting thoughts, he exclaimed, “Here is your carriage, Grace; it’s a cold night – don’t keep the coachman waiting – don’t fall into the detestable egotisms of fine people, who think that all sensations are bound up in their delicate bodies.”

“I am quite ready, Uncle Walter, but Anne has not come down yet.”

Uncle Walter a-hemed, and was politely silent for a moment, but his feelings had been set ajar by the bracelet, and the straws blew the wrong way. He even heard the coachman through the closed blinds stamping and clapping his hands. “Poor fellow – it’s very cold out there!” he muttered. “Mrs Herbert, what upon earth detains Anne? it’s half past ten!”

“Oh, that’s not very late!” replied Mrs Herbert, placidly. “Anne will be down shortly; we are getting later and later in our hours, you know – but there are advantages –”

“For heaven’s sake spare yourself the trouble of stating them; they are not worth it.”

“You detest these late hours, Uncle Walter!” said Grace.

“My child, I am no reformer. If these fine people will commit suicide, let them. The world will get on without them. The folly is the slow poison they choose; the folly for them, the misfortune for us sensible people, who are bound up with them.”

“We immolate ourselves in a great cause,” said Grace with a sigh.

“No sighing, Grace; do not be pharasaical, it does not become you. You are rather an independent young woman in your modes of going on, and if you do not like mingling with a crowd when you should be going to bed – if you truly think this an unprofitable expense of time and health – if it really be disagreeable to you to be embraced by the young men about town –”

“Oh, brother Walter,” interrupted Mrs Herbert, “you really are going too far.”

“No, Grace can bear the unvarnished truth. If our young women are not willing to sully their purity, why do they dance this cursed Polka? and if they are not bent on throwing away God’s best gifts, their health, their cheerfulness, their spirit of enjoyment, the value of their existence to others as well as to themselves, why, in the name of heaven, do they go to balls at ten and eleven, and come home at one or two, as the case may be, to suffer and inflict the consequences of such insults to nature?”

“Ah, brother!” interposed Mrs Herbert, “you must not look for old heads on young shoulders; ‘in youth and beauty wisdom is but rare.’”

Grace sat down, folded her arms, and was silent. She did not conceive that she expiated the folly she committed by theoretically condemning it, and she found no consolation in the secret impulse that carried her with the current, night after night into the arena of Vanity Fair. Besides, she was now in no spirits to measure the weapons of her wit with her Uncle Walter. Happily Mrs Herbert was always ready to fill any awkward chasms in conversation. She could find a plausible reason for whatever she did or permitted. With sense enough to lay her own course, she trimmed her sails to the breath of fashion. She was so cool in her manner, and so rational in most of her opinions, that they were commonly received as oracles, perhaps sometimes taken on trust, as one accepts a sum total to escape the trouble of scrutinizing the figures. Receiving no answer to her last oracle, she proceeded, “One must, to a certain extent, conform to the world one lives in.”

“Admit slavery with suitable boundaries!” murmured Uncle Walter.

She went on, unheeding it. “The world will not conform to an individual’s principles or taste. If all people of sense and character withdrew from the fashionable circles, what would they be? And what is a young woman in Grace’s position to do? Surely not turn Sister of Charity, like Julia Travers – or immure herself at home. Besides,” looking significantly at Grace’s bouquet, which was lying on the table, “it will be but a short sacrifice. She will soon be married, and then, like Eleanor, mere wife and mother to the end of her life.”

“Like Eleanor, God grant it! and not like the scores of women, who, after this fashionable course, bring their husbands a dowry of invalidism to be transmitted to their children.”

“What can keep Anne?” ejaculated Mrs Herbert, who tired of any voice but her own. She rang the bell and ordered John to tell Miss Anne the carriage was waiting. Uncle Walter went on – “Tell me, Grace, tomorrow, how many overworked sleepy men you met, dragged into these joyless revels by their wives or daughters – wretched victims! they must be in Wall Street tomorrow at nine. And Grace, my dear, see if poor Tallis is not biting his nails, and looking daggers at Copley, polking with his wife. Depend on it, Mrs Herbert, the tendencies of this unnatural life are bad, disgraceful to our young world, that should have a fresh life of its own, and not fall into the rut of old world follies, into usages that have grown out of the decay of an old civilization. We are rotting before we have ripened.”

“Thank heaven,” said Grace, “here comes Anne at last!”

“What in the world kept you, my dear?” asked her mother.

“One can’t always tell one’s reasons,” answered the young lady, pettishly; “and I wish you would not ask me, mamma!”

Mrs Herbert held Grace’s bouquet, while she put on her cloak. It was composed of rosebuds, violets, and other sweet and costly flowers of the season. Uncle Walter inhaled its delicious odors, which, like airs from heaven, restored the geniality of his dear old face.

“From whom, Grace?” he asked.

“From Horace Copley,” she replied, courageously.

“Pagh!” he exclaimed, putting it down; its sweetness was gone.

“Uncle Walter!” said Grace, in a low voice, “you are north-east tonight – not yourself.”

“I am not the trifler I sometimes am,” he replied, gravely; and then putting his arm tenderly around her, he conducted her to the carriage. With her foot on its step, she turned to him for his good night kiss, and said, “You have filled my atmosphere with blue devils, dear Uncle Walter – make the ‘reverse passes!’”

He kissed her. “God bless you, dear child,” he said; “God save you from temptation, and deliver you from evil!”

This was not a cheerful preparation for a ball. Grace did the thing out of season. She gave way to tears.

There are few girls whose hearts do not soften at the sight of tears. “What upon earth ails you, dear Grace?” asked Anne Carlton, in a tone of real concern.

“Oh, I am – a little nervous this evening.”

“Well, one does get nervous waiting, and I beg your pardon, Grace – and I will tell you how it was. I would not tell mamma before your Uncle Walter, for you know he does not understand such matters, and he only just makes game of them. You know, of course, I expected bouquets this evening – I felt sure of one – I had reason to; and when Justine told me one had come for you, I felt horridly, you know. I was sure there had been some mistake, and I should yet get one, and I waited till the last minute. And you know it is mortifying, when we go in together, that you should have one – such a beauty, too – and I none at all!”

“Take mine,” said Grace; “you will really oblige me, Anne.” Grace spoke in the sincerity of her heart. The sweet breath of the flowers was tainted to her, and she had a sense of relief when Anne, after decent protestation, accepted it, saying, “It does not quite match your wreath.”

“Mrs Seton’s ball” was expected to be one of the most brilliant fêtes of the winter. Her stately mansion, like many other piles of brick and mortar belonging to our “merchant princes” – whose enterprise and industry express more potent oil than that of Aladdin’s lamp – almost equaled the palaces of Europe in the luxury of space, and outrivaled them in costly furniture, and abounding decorations of bronzes, scores of statuettes, with some sculpture from the modern statuaries, and beautiful pictures – not all copies.

As Mrs Seton’s door opened to her fair guests, such brilliancy of light, and music, and perfume issued forth as might come from a festa in the gardens of Gul in their bloom. The banister was wreathed with japonicas; pots, with the rarest roses, were placed all along the hall on each side; and vases, filled with flowers, were in every niche and on every table.

The young ladies met their matron escort in the cloak room, and met there, too, Miss Adeline Clapp, who, bedizened, be-flounced, and be-flowered, as if to demonstrate how much she could afford to wear at once, was a most striking contrast and foil to Grace, even to Miss Carlton, who was expensively and elaborately appareled, according to the laws of those Medes and Persians, Paris milliners and French maids.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Miss Adeline, with her imperturbable good nature, “how glad I am to see you, girls! I have been watching ever so long for Mr Lisle to introduce me, but he always misses me, somehow.”

“Oh that horror!” whispered Miss Carlton to her chaperone; “pray give me your arm; Grace won’t much mind entering with her.”

And Grace did not. Her Uncle Walter had cast a deep shadow over her spirits. As she entered a drawing room, which the attractions of the ball room had cleared of all but mere observers, she arrested every eye. Perhaps it was her discord with her surroundings. It was as if the solemn peal of an organ had struck in upon the merry music of a dance. But it was only the sensation of a moment. The stream of a drawing room is too shallow for anything more than a ripple.

“Who is that?” asked a very young gentleman of a pretty piece of French modeling, just “come out.”

“Miss Carlton. Is not her dress lovely? Pink and silver – perfect taste.”

“I mean the lady behind her – taller, with dark hair, and splendid eyes.”

“Not know her! You are a stranger in New York. She has been out four years! Dreadful! is it not?”

“What is dreadful?” asked the novice.

“Why, to be still going out, and not engaged, when one is so old. They say she was such a belle, and splendid the first winter. Now, of course, she can’t have much attention; and if she appears another season, she will have only ladies to talk to.”

A hard fate, certainly, if this little flippancy were a sample of her sex. Archibald Lisle stood in the middle of the drawing room with a knot of gentlemen, who were discussing the last foreign news. He was in the midst of a sentence when Miss Herbert entered, and he finished it so abruptly, and with his eye averted, that his listeners turned to see what had diverted his attention; and one of them said, “Lisle, there’s a lady beckoning to you.”

“What lady?” asked Lisle, instinctively postponing his fate.

“Why, that one that looks so like a full-blown double hollyhock; go, Lisle – her beck looks like destiny.”

Lisle advanced, but not yielding to destiny, he passed Miss Adeline with a bow of cold recognition, and joined Miss Herbert, whom, his imagination being sent off into flowery regions by the hollyhock, he mentally symbolized by the beautiful lotus, so pure, so graceful, so queenly she looked amid that garden of living, but very artificial flowers. Grace had not yet gone so far into the sere and yellow leaf, as to be left to the penance and mortification of the society of her own sex! Two youths, with fresh moustaches, and near their majority, had approached, eager for her hand for the next polka – for though she was not the “belle of a first winter,” she was, according to the parrotry of society, the most “distinguée” person in it. She declined their juvenile homage, and turning from them, she greeted Lisle cordially; and asking him if he had ever seen Mrs Seton’s winter garden, she offered to do its honors for him, and presently led him into a scene of such enchantment, with its soft light, its fountain, vases, exquisite statues, flowers, and fragrance of growing plants, and her who, to him, was the genius loci, that he seemed translated to another world.

Grace’s spirits were relieved by the change, and she was unconsciously stimulated by a spirit correspondent to her own. They fell upon topics that interested them both, and, without being disturbed by the few stragglers that now and then found their way from the ball room, they loitered away a half hour; to Grace, a half hour of pure enjoyment that she seldom found in society; to Archibald, one of the few half hours of life whose minutes have an indefinite extension, and whose end is like a stroke of doom. The end came – not pleasantly – by the sudden entrance of Mrs Tallis; she, with Copley, retreating, panting, from a protracted polka. The meeting did not seem agreeable to either party. Lisle bit his lips; Grace looked grave and icy; Mrs Tallis shrugged her shoulders, and Copley, who had entered all gaiety and devotion, was like a masquer surprised without his mask. Mrs Tallis sank into the first chair, as they all re-entered the drawing room, protesting that she was “tired and heated to death.”

Copley was the first to recover self-possession. “I came here, as you know,” he said, in a low voice, to Grace, “solely to meet you. You forgot your engagement for the first polka – three have been danced – and I concluded, from seeing your bouquet in Miss Carlton’s hand, that you were not here. Why, may I ask,” he added, in his most deliberate utterance, giving Grace time to circumnavigate the whole world of feeling while he paused on a word, “why did you give the flowers to her?”

An evasive answer rose to Grace’s lips. She gave the true one: “Uncle Walter did not like their odor.”

“Is your Uncle Walter forever to thrust himself between – ”

“Copley,” called out Mrs Tallis, “I am fainting with this heat – pray, order me a glass of iced lemonade.”

Copley went off to do the lady’s bidding, and did not, when he returned, recur to the interrupted topic. His resentment had been suddenly provoked, and for once he had spoken impulsively. But he understood the game he was playing, and that its success depended on his adroitness. He comprehended the advantage of piquing a woman’s curiosity. He knew that the desire of conquest is stimulated by its uncertainty. He understood well how to calculate the lower impulses of human nature – the nobler ones were out of his reckoning.

Mrs Tallis had fixed her soft brown eyes on Grace, while Copley was speaking to her. “Has he,” she thought, “deceived me as to their relations?” She felt an emotion of jealousy, and abashed that she did feel it, and swallowing the lemonade brought to her, she accepted the first hand offered, and returned to the dancers.

Copley had withdrawn from Grace, and was sitting moodily at a table covered with objets d’arts, apparently occupied with examining them, but really watching Grace, and Archibald, who stood near her, fixed by her magnetic power over him. Near them were a cluster of observers engaged in the usual common places of “polite” society from Dean Swift’s time to its present culmination.

“What delightful parties Mrs Seton gives!” exclaimed a good-natured lady. “Everything so perfectly refined, and elegant, and genteel. I do think the ‘Potiphar Papers’ are abominable – they spread such false ideas of New York society.”

“I suspect,” said another, “that the writer of them has never been into our really ‘best society.’”

“How beautiful Mrs Mervin’s dress is – real point lace. Do you know it cost $10,000?”

“Possible?”

“A dead loss,” interposed a cynic. “Mrs Mervin is so hideous, she spoils her pretty things; she should get a lay figure to wear her fine dresses.”

“Is not it a brilliant ball?” exclaimed a delighted young lady. “I heard an English gentleman remark he had never seen so many beautiful young ladies together.”

“He should not have restricted it to the young,” remarked a very young gentleman. “There is Mrs Tallis, she is full five-and-twenty, and the most lovely person here. So fascinating. I never talk to any but married ladies – and –” He looked at Grace, and paused, not exactly knowing how to finish with the compliment he designed for her.

“And elderly ones,” she said, smiling an acceptance. Then turning to Lisle, she said, “Mrs Tallis is exceedingly graceful – you do not think so, perhaps?”

“I do not think this dance admits of its display.”

“You do not like the polka?”

“Not within the narrow precincts of a drawing room, for fine gentlemen and ladies. I thought it charming, danced as I have seen it, by peasants on the green-sward, danced with vigorous activity, and spontaneous glee, to their national music, interrupted by rustic songs.”

“I am glad you see nothing worse than the want of the open sky, and unlimited space; or perhaps knowing I sometimes dance it, you have modified your criticism?”

His reply was interrupted by their hostess, Mrs Seton, who, having too much bonhomie in her nature to be fashionably indifferent to the pleasure of her guests, advanced, saying, “Dear Miss Herbert, don’t you dance tonight?”

“May I answer, Mrs Seton?” said Copley, rising and offering his arm to Grace; “Your promise to me was only deferred.” He had watched Grace, from under his half-raised lids, a second time that evening talking with apparent interest to Lisle. She was conscious she had wounded him, and, true woman, was ready to drop balm into the wound. She gave him her hand, though after her Uncle Walter’s invective against the polka, she had half resolved never again to dance it.

Lisle turned away, dissatisfied with Grace, and dissatisfied with everything around him. He could not look on her while she was dancing the polka with Copley. There is something akin to religion in the love of a pure and lofty spirit. It cannot brook degrading associations with the object of its homage.

Neither reason, time, nor absence had abated Archibald’s devotion to Grace. But now the conviction was growing, that she had given her heart to another, and given it unworthily. “If she decline to the level of Copley,” he thought “the spell will be dissolved. I shall awake, and know I have been dreaming.” Never was pleasure approached with feelings less attuned to it than Grace’s when she suffered herself to be placed within the ring of dancers. That word “embrace,” which Mr Herbert had uttered so emphatically, rang in her ears. A single true word, uttered by one whom love invests with authority, gives a fresh force and aspect to a familiar thing. Grace had habitually danced the polka, like other young women, unreflectingly – shielded by her own purity, “in wardship of her innocence.” Now, with newly awakened perceptions, she began the giddy whirl. Both she and Copley were people of mark. The ring of spectators was augmented – the circle contracted – she felt his arm around her – she cast her own eyes down. She felt his. She felt his hot breath on her cheek. She had a confused intolerable sensation. Mrs Tallis was among the dancers. She lost her self-possession in observing Grace and her partner. Her movement was irregular, and the two ladies came in contact, slightly disarranging Grace’s hair, and Mrs Tallis’s point-lace. Both withdrew together to the dressing room. While the maid in waiting was sewing the tear in Mrs Tallis’s magnificent lace, which her husband had given her a few days before – at a cost of some thousands, as a peace offering for a taunt to which she had provoked him – Mrs Tallis, quite unconcerned at the accident, was looking steadily in Grace’s face. Nature had sown good seed in Mrs Tallis’s heart, but thorns had sprung up; cruel, and alas! common thorns in the field of a woman’s life.

Grace returned Mrs Tallis’s gaze. It seemed as if the eyes of those young women were spellbound, as if each were looking into the other’s soul. Mrs Tallis’ suffused with tears; she wiped them away, and then holding up her handkerchief, an exquisite wrought-web of lace, she said, half crying and half laughing, “Think of my steeping this in tears! honest tears! I cannot keep them back. What odd creatures we are, Grace Herbert! Would you like to know what has overset me so?”

Grace shook her head.

“Ah!” resumed Mrs Tallis, “I understand that sad smile, but you need not fear confession. I have none to make to you. I was merely going to tell you that you made me feel as my little Elise sometimes does, with a look from her sweet earnest eyes. It seems to me as if an angel spake in their glance – nothing false can stand before it.” Again the pretty handkerchief received gracious drops. “It seems so odd,” she continued, “that we should have been sent up here together, at the very moment I was feeling – well – not very pleasantly toward you, and now the current is so changed. I long to stretch out my hand to you – to give you a warning – may I?”

“Certainly, but you must leave me at liberty to take or reject it.”

“You are very proud – very reserved – but I must speak – I am superstitious; I feel a force upon me that I cannot resist. Do not – for all the world and the glory of it – do not marry one who does not love you – Rupert Tallis tried that, and it has been nothing but wretchedness for us both. Grace,” she added in a whisper that rang in Grace’s ears long after, “Horace Copley does not love you!” She had grasped Grace’s arm. Grace silently and coldly drew back. Her pride recoiled from the communication. The wire suddenly snapped that had conveyed the electric spark from her soul to Mrs Tallis’s, and kindled that lady’s latent and best feeling. Her poorer self regained the ascendancy. “I have been very foolish,” she said, “I do not know what possessed me to run on as I have done; but you will forget it all – come – we have been here too long, we shall be missed – come along, Miss Herbert!”

But Grace did not follow. The ploughshare that leaves no trace on sand, makes a furrow in a richer soil. Mrs Tallis could revert to the gaieties of the drawing room; Grace could not. She sat lost in the depths of not very pleasant reflection, when she was aroused by Miss Smythe, who came to say that Mrs Seton was afraid Miss Herbert was faint or ill, that she stayed away so long.

“Oh, was it only your hair falling down? what a pity to lose your nice polka – with Mr Horace Copley too – he is so fascinating, and they say he never polks except with Mrs Tallis, and Miss Seton, and you. They say Mr Tallis is so jealous of him – it must be nice to make a husband just a very little jealous – don’t you think so?”

“Charming!”

There was something in Grace’s voice or face that startled the young lady, for looking at once serious, she said, “Oh, Miss Herbert, I beg your pardon – I quite forgot, but you know, if it is so, it has not come out yet. I don’t believe that Mr Tallis has the least reason in the world to be jealous. But do come down, dear Miss Herbert – I am engaged for six dances ahead. Was not it nice of Mrs Seton to make this ball to bring me out – just because she was a friend of poor mamma – and she’s been dead so long! It secures me partners for the winter, you know.” And then, offering to reconduct Grace to the drawing room without going down the public staircase, she threaded the private passages of the house to one connecting with the dancing room, to which three or four young men had retreated. The door stood ajar; and while they hesitated to push it against them, one of the men made a criticism on the dancers that transfixed them both. Miss Smythe put her handkerchief to her mouth to suppress a titter. Grace’s cheek burned. These young men had just come from polking with young girls but just emerged from the nursery. Where were their parents? For the most part in bed. A few, perhaps, looking wearily on!

“Did you see Grace Herbert bolt when they came into close quarters?” asked one of the men.

Grace revolted from hearing her name in their mouths, and again retreated to the dressing room, Miss Smythe following. “Aren’t men funny?” she said.

“Funny!” echoed Grace in a voice that checked her tittering.

“But after all,” added Miss Smythe, “it does not prove anything. To the pure all things are pure, you know.”

“A much perverted truth, Mary Smythe; you and I had better take the admonition we have been favored with from the impure.”

“Admonition from those fellows – why that would be looking for flesh in the fish market as papa says; oh, no, I go to church to get admonitions. But come, dear Miss Herbert, I really must return to my partners.”

She did so, and Grace followed the little parcel of frippery, in no humor to return to the gaiety, but anxious to observe Copley and Mrs Tallis. The drawing room they entered was nearly deserted. There were a few waning ladies there, a few wearied dancers, and a few more wearied chaperones. One tableau-vivante struck Grace. Mrs Tallis sat in a chair of exquisite carving and maroon velvet that once belonged to medieval royalty. In her sparkling eye, brighter than the brilliants that lit her hair, there was no sign or trace of tears. Mrs Tallis’s genius for the fine art of the toilet was the unfailing theme of Copley’s admiration, and this evening he had pronounced her dress a chef d’oevre. Her gown was an azure-blue velvet with a berthe and flounce of point lace. Her sleeves were looped to the shoulder with diamond agraffes, “showing off and setting off” – so Copley said – “her divine arms.” One was encircled with a diamond bracelet, which, as she remarked flippantly, made half the women in the room break the tenth commandment. Alas! the hour was at hand when this same bracelet would have a mournful significance in her eyes. But now, she looked the light of a hariem, careless of any destiny beyond it – surely the faith that a good and an evil spirit are battling for the soul is natural!

Copley, as he stood leaning on Mrs Tallis’s chair, and bending over her, well personated a Paynim knight in thrall, with his auburn hyacinthine locks, his Saxon eye, and exotic air. They did not see Grace – they were working out their own problems.

There was another keen observer, pensively standing by the mantelpiece, and leaning his elbow on it. Archibald Lisle’s present had a far, and very dim perspective. Supper was announced, and Copley, starting from his absorption, encountered Grace’s eye, and moved by a resistless force, he sprang toward her and offered her his arm. Impulses are unequivocal. Grace felt a triumph in that which brought him from Mrs Tallis’s to her side, and he, rejoicing in its effect without analyzing it, forgot Mrs Tallis, forgot his poor resentment at the transfer of his bouquet, and Grace forgot all her vexations, and the evening that had begun in clouds, ended in the coming out of one star of hope and promise after another – preluding a fair tomorrow.

But the night was not quite ended. At the departure of the guests, Miss Carlton’s carriage was not forthcoming. Some lady said she had one, and unfortunately but one vacant seat to offer. Anne Carlton accepted it, saying in a low voice to Grace, in Copley’s hearing, “You will not object to walking with Mr Copley?” The night was fine, the distance short, and Grace – and certainly Copley – was quite willing to accept the necessity. They had passed beyond the crowd of coachmen and attendants, when Grace perceived they were followed by a light, quick footstep, and looking behind her, she saw a woman’s slight figure enveloped in a shawl. She instinctively hurried forward. The footsteps quickened, till they came to a corner near Mrs Herbert’s house, where they were to turn. The figure shot before them, and then suddenly turning, just as they were under a lamp, she brought them to a full stop, by laying her hand upon Copley’s shoulder. The hand was so small, bare, and wasted, that it looked like a starved child’s. There must have been a spiritual force in its touch, for Copley stood as if he were petrified. The shawl that hooded the stranger’s head fell back, and disclosed a face young, and yet old, for sickness and killing sorrow had done the work of time, sunken the eye and hollowed the cheek; but suffering, in all its varied kind, had not effaced the divine seal from the fair young brow, from which the long tresses of tangled hair parted, falling back over the threadbare shawl. It was a strange meeting! Never were strength and weakness, security and ruin, brought into closer contact, or more awful contrast.

“You know me, Mr Copley?” said the poor girl, gazing into Copley’s eyes, and speaking in a voice that, though low and husky, had a most touching sweetness and gentleness in it. “Can you forget? Oh dear! oh dear! I cannot!” Her utterance was with such effort, and so slow, that it seemed an age to her tormented listener before he felt her clutch on his arm loosening. He shook her off, and she sank to the pavement, uttering no word or groan. Grace was shocked. She involuntarily paused, and looking back, saw a little spaniel whimpering over the poor sufferer.

“Pray do not stop,” said Copley; “there’s a watchman coming, who will give the proper aid. These wretched women haunt the streets all through the night; they learn one’s name, and pretend some reason for one’s notice or charity, as this poor wretch did.”

Grace made no reply. She was grieved at the spectacle she had seen; but not suspicious. As they parted, Copley dared to raise her hands to his lips! lips just defiled with a cruel lie. He hastened homeward, avoiding retracing his steps.

He need not; the poor haunter of the night watches had been taken to a station-house, whence she was the next day sent, unconscious, to the hospital on Blackwell’s Island.

It was two o’clock when Mrs Tallis alighted at her own door.

“Is Mr Tallis at home?” she asked of the servant who admitted her.

“Yes, madam; he came home two hours since. He is in the library.”

“Good night, Rupert,” she said, opening the library door in passing it.

“Come in, Augusta.”

“I can’t. I am tired and sleepy.”

“Who came home with you?”

“Not my husband:

“‘More water glideth by the mill,

Than wots the miller of.’”

“Pshaw, Augusta, who did come home with you?”

“Ask your servant – the only escort you provided me,” she replied, and pettishly shut the door.

Tallis did not degrade himself by questioning the servant, and went to his own apartment, without the small satisfaction he might have had from ascertaining the fact that his wife was not attended by Copley.

Mrs Tallis went to her own room, and first, as women, gentle and simple, are given to do, surveyed herself in the glass. Her sparkling brilliancy had abated under the pressure of late hours and sundry dissatisfactions, but it was with a very pleasant consciousness that she turned away to the crib of her sleeping child, a girl of four years – a guardian angel, lent to keep sacred the marriage vow. The maternal instinct was very strong in Mrs Tallis’s heart. She bent over her child, and kissed her. There is a test in the touch of innocence – it calls up sad, self-accusing thoughts. Augusta Tallis dropped a tear on her child’s soft cheek – there was a contrite prayer in that tear.

Archibald Lisle to Mrs Clifford.

Thank you, my dear friend. Yes, I am getting into the old track famously. Some of my old clients have welcomed me cordially; and though I was cruelly knocked down from those ‘steeps so hard to climb’ of my profession, yet I am in no wise discouraged. True, my competitors shot ahead of me, but I shall gain upon them. There is nothing like the whip and spur of necessity; in our land, the poor working man is on vantage ground, the general sympathy is with him, and if he be capable, and in earnest, he has plenty of work to do. I have delivered two Lectures, made up of my foreign observations, which were well received, and filled my pockets. I have had many requests to repeat them. I shall not. A man should not be diverted from his profession by ‘fancy work.’ I have offers from booksellers and editors that will profitably fill my leisure hours, if I have them. Thus, you see, I can answer your inquiry satisfactorily. I do not ‘regret the obligations’ I have assumed for my stepbrothers. I have economical quarters, and by avoiding hotel life, and all superfluous indulgence, I shall compass my great object – their education; and after that, Yankee boys can take care of themselves.

Do not, my dear Mrs Clifford, be too anxious about your son Max. A very young man, without counsel and oversight, without indeed a friend, as he has been in my absence, could scarcely escape entanglements in this city. But take courage – he will come out right.

Letty is very happy at old Steinberg’s. My stepmother did not quite understand her – Letty is the ‘china vase.’ My German lessons seem no task, but a pure enjoyment to her, and she is rapidly fitting herself, by music and drawing lessons, etc., etc., and by disciplining the little Steinbergs, for her future career as teacher.

“My dear friend, don’t think me a coxcomb when I tell you that I am learning to pity a girl hunted down by a pertinacious lover. You may regard my relations with Miss Clapp purely comical; to me, they seem deeply tragical. If I have an antipathy, like that some people indulge for cats and spiders, it is just for such a specimen of humanity as this Adeline Clapp, too well-meaning to be shaken off, too obtuse and self-complacent to perceive ridicule, and too good-natured to be provoked. There is no weapon that can wound her, and alas! no armor that can repel her. Her brother was my classmate. Her father had a place called Clapp Bank, near Cambridge. They were wealthy, had plenty of horses, and good fishing-ground, and abounded in the animal luxuries tempting to college lads kept on pretty straight commons. They were hospitable, and we ready enough, occasionally, to accept their hospitality. Clapp gave me a dinner on my twenty-first birthday, just before I was graduated. We had a dance in the evening – a merry-making without any very scrupulous restrictions. Miss Adeline was a buxom girl, then some seventeen. I, however much I may have been profited – or corrupted – by the world since, was a shy lad then, and Miss Adeline’s free and easy style was very acceptable to me, inasmuch as it knocked down fences I should not have had the courage to surmount. It was a moonlight evening. We romped in the garden, and took little episodical rowings, tête-à-tête, on the bay; I may have made extravagant love to the girl, but I cannot by an ‘honest trifle be betrayed to deepest consequences.’ The woman is incessant. She butters me with presents. Both slippers and a smoking cap were sent anonymously, and labeled, ‘worked by the giver’s hand.’ Then came a dressing case with her name full blown out. This I returned, with a savage note, saying my small apartment allowed me no room for superfluities. She is ubiquitous. She meets me in my walks – crosses me in my pleasures. My first dinner with the charming Esterlys was half spoiled by her presence; and a few days since, when I was invited by my friend, Lieutenant Orne, to a breakfast on board a government ship, there also came my ‘hobgoblin.’ There were more guests than seats, and I had just ensconced myself in a delightful nook behind Mrs Esterly and her sister, when my name was called out from another table by my friend, the lieutenant. ‘Here Lisle,’ he said, ‘make your way here. Your friend, Miss Clapp, bids me tell you she has reserved a chair for you beside herself.’ The dreadful woman half rose to show me the place gaping for me. There was a general pause till I should make my way, and over the chairs and benches I went, jostling one person and displacing another, and submitted to my destiny as one does to inevitable death. She was as complacent as if I had voluntarily forced my way to her, and began talking about ‘the commission.’ But I have not told you of that. A week or two since she overheard Mr Walter Herbert advise me to get the appointment of Commissioner of Deeds for Massachusetts. Nothing would have been easier, as I have friends in Boston. But before I had taken a step – in five days, came the commission, officially signed and sealed, with a private letter from a certain Medad Clapp, who informs me he has the honor to be one of the Governor’s Council, and that, at the earnest request of his niece, he has obtained the appointment for me. ‘Uncle Medad,’ she said, ‘never puts his hand to the ploughshare, and turns back.’ Dear Mrs Clifford, is this relentless Clapp ploughshare to drive through me? No matter what coldness my manner expresses, this woman heeds it as little as a steamer does a slight incrustation of ice. But to return to the breakfast. As soon as the general hum permitted, and with only a slight depression of her voice, she referred to ‘that birthday fête.’ She asked me, with a tone and look that perplexes and annoys me every time I think of it, ‘If I remembered Judge Eastly?’ ‘No?’ ‘You don’t mean so? Don’t remember the judge sitting in pa’s sanctum when we came in from boating?’

‘No, Miss Clapp, I remember nothing of that evening, but that it was a mad boy-and-girl frolic, and that I drank too much iced champagne.’ She tittered at this, and ‘hoped the time would come when I should recall it with pleasure,’ etc., etc.

Is it possible that the champagne affected my brain more than I was aware of, or that I said or did something which has compromised me with these odious people?

Keep my counsel, my dear friend; my predicament is too ridiculous for sympathies less elastic than yours. Above all, do not tell Alice. If she loves a laugh as she did four years ago, I shall lose all the dignity of age and travel, and be her butt when I come to Mapleton – God speed the day.

Yours faithfully,

A.L.

P.S. – I am told that the Clapps, by their factory stock, and the rise of real estate, have become enormously rich. This fact accounts for Miss C.’s confident expectation that I shall throw myself at her feet. That will be ‘when ourselves we do not own.’

Mrs Clifford’s letter, to which the foregoing is an answer, intimated a curiosity to know Lisle’s impression of Grace Herbert since his return. He did not, our readers may have observed, once mention her, except in connection with her sister at the naval breakfast. He at first wrote “Mrs Esterly, and her glorious sister,” then struck his pen through “glorious,” and wrote “captivating,” then effaced that, and substituted “beautiful,” and finally burned the sheet, and took a fresh one, using no suggestive adjectives.

“Trifles light as air are confirmations strong” to more issues than one!

Extract from an Epistle from Miss Clapp to her brother, Orondates Clapp

… He’s a trump – take my word for it, Dates. He lectured at the Mercantile last evening. I went early, and got a seat directly in front of him. It seemed as if he could not keep his eyes off from me! The house was choke-full, and all attention. You might have heard a pin fall. He was posted up about everything t’other side, and told us a lot about Greece and Athens, and Egypt and Thebes. There were a number of literary characters present, distinguished authors and authoresses that write in the Magazines. He got, they say, $400 by this Lecture alone! Don’t he know how to coin money out of talents? He looks like a different individual – so genteel! – you can’t think!

I am leaving no stone unturned to sound his feelings. I must say he rather plays off, but shyer fish than he have been caught by poorer bait than is at the end of a Clapp line! Don’t you say so?

No, Dates – I can answer you sincerely. I don’t feel uneasy about Miss G.H. – I own she’s a striking individual, and as I told you in my last, she rather took up his attention at her sister Esterly’s, but then she’s other fish to fry. She’s thought to have the best chance of getting a millionaire – a young man at the top of fashion. He’s said not to be as moral as Plymouth Rock, but fortune and fashion, you know, will cover a multitude of sins with us girls. G. H. is very set-up and ambitious, and she’ll take nothing below the head. I hinted as much to Archy – ‘a word to the wise,’ you know – at the same time I alluded to the individual that could put one at the head – not speaking plain, but in a sort of parable way.

Now, my dear brother Dates, don’t you let on of past or future till I make the motion.

P.S. Tell Malvina I have bought a love of a bonnet at $50 – don’t scold, Dates! As Colonel Trump says, we must not spare ammunition if we would win the battle.

Please ask aunt to drop my subscription to the Seaman’s Aid.

We must be as discreet as Miss Adeline, and keep her secret for the present. In the meantime, she sits in her web watching her prey, inextricably enclosed, as she believes, in its meshes. Miss Adeline wished to come up to the standard of her own aesthetic ideas. She believed law was on her side. She would have equity too. She would resolve that dreadful problem of necessity and free will by seeing her victim throw himself at her feet, unconscious that he was bound to her by a chain that no skill or force of his could break.

Chapter 17

“The horse which drags his halter has not quite escaped.”

The pursuit of Grace Herbert was the present business of Horace Copley’s life; he had set upon it the force of an unbending and relentless will. But there were interesting episodes in this pursuit; bowery and fragrant nooks on a perplexed and obstructed road. He had turned toward one of these one bright morning, when he was disappointed by finding Grace “not at home,” and vexed, by learning she had gone on some “charity scout,” as he termed it, with his cousin Julia Travers. He had urgent motives for deprecating her intimacy with Miss Travers. Mrs Tallis was at home. He was shown into her boudoir, arranged with the luxury and taste that lend a charm and refinement to idleness.

The lady of the bower soon appeared in a white merino morning dress, with a border of embroidered violets, and a cap trimmed with clusters of violets, beautiful, but exhaling no perfume, no divine essence – so much the truer emblem for Mrs Tallis’ boudoir. No one excelled Mrs Tallis in those coquetries of the toilet which our pretty young women bring home from Paris, if, alas! they bring nothing else! Her little girl Elise followed her importunately to the door; she kissed her, and sent her back to the nursery.

“That is a lovely child of yours, Augusta!” said Copley.

“Lovely, indeed! She is to me the dearest thing in life.”

“Dearest? perhaps – perhaps she is, Augusta; but – she ought not to be.”

“Ought not! and why, pray?”

“The dearest love should be bestowed where it can be returned in kind.”

“Should be given to my husband, you mean!” Augusta Tallis probably knew he did not mean her husband; “you would be quite right if there were any ought in love,” she added, with a sigh. Copley answered only by his eyes. They glistened like a serpent’s. Mrs Tallis blushed through and around a slight tinge of rouge on her cheek. “I never loved my husband, as you very well know, and therefore I may say it – if I had, I should have loved him to the end.”

“Yours is not an uncommon case, Augusta; few women marry for love.”

“Oh, there you are wrong! Girls usually believe that they are in love when they marry.”

“Pshaw, Augusta! How women hug their delusions. Just look around upon our acquaintance. Take out those who have married for an establishment, or to escape single life, or to marry before their cotemporaries, or for the éclât of an engagement, a trousseau and a bridal, and how many will remain?”

“Ah, Copley, you men of the world always talk in this way – you all hold women in contempt.”

“Pardon me – not all women.” Mrs Tallis smiled; her vanity naturally made herself the exception, as Copley meant it should. His thought had flown off to one whom he felt that no mean motive could make to “stoop from her pride of place.” “But, Augusta,” he proceeded, “truly I am surprised to hear you say that you did not marry for love. I knew it was a transient madness. How was it? You, of all women, would be governed by your feelings, which, I allow, do govern all loveable women. Tallis’ fortune could not have influenced you, Augusta?”

“It did not – truly it did not. I married him because my father would not permit me to marry the man I did love. I have once truly loved.”

“But once, Augusta!”

Mrs Tallis made no reply to this exclamation; she did not even raise her downcast eyes, but proceeded – “My father did not compel me to marry Rupert – no, he petted me into consenting to what he called the dearest wish of his heart. Rupert was in love – I really believe he is yet – poor fellow! He deserved a woman that could love him. He knew I did not – I told him so. After being crossed in my only preference, I was indifferent to the rest. Girls must marry before they lose the freshness of novelty; so I pleased my father, and married Tallis.” She paused for a moment, and then added, “and I waked from the excitement of a magnificent trousseau and a brilliant wedding to a vacant aching heart.” A shade of real sadness passed over Augusta Tallis’ beautiful face. If she had looked in Copley’s, she would have seen a faint, derisive smile, but no more emotion than is excited by reading a commonplace novel.

“Truly,” he said, “we do these things almost as well here as they do them in the old world. But, Augusta,” he asked in a low, significant voice, “has nothing filled that aching void?”

“Yes, yes, indeed. My child came and filled it – thank God!”

“Filled it! A child satisfy all the cravings of a woman’s heart – that is simply impossible. Your maternal instincts are strong, but – ” He paused, looked in Mrs Tallis’ eyes, walked across the room, returned, and unrolled a little parcel he had been playing with, and held out an exquisitely carved ivory box, containing cigarettes – “I got this for you,” he said, “do you like it?”

“Like it! it’s lovely; but why did you break off in the midst of your sentence?”

“Shall I finish it?”

“Of course – why not?”

“What simplicity! Do you say ‘why not’ in earnest?”

“Certainly I do.”

“Well, Augusta, to me the right to a reciprocal, equal love seems the dearest right you possess. No man has a right to deprive you of it, be he father or husband. Augusta!” he took her hand, she withdrew it, rose hastily, half turned from him, and said – not firmly – “Don’t talk to me in this way, Copley!”

“I will not if you bid me not. I can be silent, I can command my tongue, if I cannot my feelings. Sit down, dear Augusta; take a cigarette – a cigarette becomes your lips. Your lips become everything. Shall I light it?”

“No, Copley; take them away. My husband has forbidden them.”

“Forbidden! Is not the promise to obey as void as the promise to love?”

“No, no – I can obey. If I were to be married over again, I would leave out ‘love,’ and promise to ‘obey’ at wholesale.”

“And let love go whither it would?”

“I did not say that, Horace.”

“But – could you help it?”

“Oh, don’t ask me such questions. I promised Elise to come back to her. I must go – you must excuse me.”

“No, no – not yet. There she is going through the entry with her nurse.”

Why did the soft accents of her child’s voice and the tread of her little feet sound like a call to her mother? Why did the shutting of the hall door seem to bode her evil and self-reproach? Heaven sends more monitions than are noted.

Copley opened the piano – “Come, come, Augusta,” he said, emphatically, “give me music, if you will give me nothing else.”

She sat down to the instrument, and he sat beside her. He turned over a music book to a favorite Italian air. She began playing, but played falteringly. He hummed an accompaniment. She felt his arm stealing around her – and she permitted it.

At this moment her husband, whom she believed to be a hundred miles out of the city, entered the boudoir, and was close to them before they heard him. Both, startled by his exclamation, rose and faced him. Before either spoke, he gave Copley a blow that sent him reeling against the sharp corner of the mantel. He staggered into a chair. The blood flowed from his head. He was deadly pale, and fainting. “You have killed him, Rupert!” said Mrs Tallis, too much terrified to think of anything but Copley’s condition. She supported his head, and endeavored to staunch the blood with her handkerchief. Tallis stood with his arms folded, looking fiercely at both. In a few moments, that seemed endless to the husband and wife, Copley showed signs of consciousness. Tallis rang the bell, and ordered a servant to call a carriage, and to send one of the maids with water, bandages, etc., saying coolly, that “Mr. Copley had hurt himself.”

Augusta Tallis, pale with fright and dread, her morning dress dabbled with blood, withdrew. She heard her husband walking the room adjoining hers. She heard a carriage; she saw Copley, assisted by her servant, get into it, and drive away. She knew that she had provoked her husband’s jealousy, and she felt that she deserved his deep displeasure; but she was not far enough sunken in wrong to brook disgrace, and after a short deliberation, she opened the door into his room and told him truly, without the suppression or extenuation of a word, every particular of her interview with Copley. He believed her. She was naturally straightforward and courageous. Through her life of folly she had preserved her truth – kept intact this one saving virtue.

Rupert Tallis was a sagacious man, and, after the insanity of passion had passed, a just one, he had a bitter consciousness that his wife had never loved him, and he felt his right to reproach her much abated by this fact.

“I ask nothing, for I deserve nothing for my own sake, Rupert,” she said; “but for Elise – poor dear little Elise – forgive what is past. You are not deceived – I am not false. For the sake of our child, let us maintain friendly relations, and live decently in the world’s eye.”

“Oh, Augusta, I loved you – you know I loved you.”

“Yes, Rupert, and I believe you love me still. That does not help the matter; but we have one common interest, one inalienable bond – consider it.”

Tallis was amazed at his wife’s coolness, and he was touched by her appeal to his love for their child. He was surprised by the strength of character that seemed so suddenly developed. A woman driven to the wall can use all the strength she possesses. While he was still silent and perplexed what to do, and what to say, “I entreat you, my husband,” his wife urged, “to put your just anger, and all selfish considerations aside, and to act for our child!”

“And if I could,” he at last answered, “if you would be discreet, and I forbearing, how are you to be saved from scandal? Copley must challenge me.”

“You must refuse to fight; you have far more than avenged any wrong you have received.”

“But Copley is a fighting man – he cannot pocket a blow.”

“He must. He shall not expose me to an infamy I do not deserve – nor shall the life of my child’s father be put in peril by my folly.”

Her last words, more than anything she had said before, touched and mollified her husband. He was still a lover, as his wife had truly said; and he deserved to be a happy married man! Mrs Tallis heard her little girl mounting the stairs, and singing as she came. She opened the door and called her, and the child rushed into the room, fresh and exultant, as if love, and innocence, and gladness filled the world. Her mother sat her on her father’s knee.

“Sit close by us, mamma,” she said; “here is one arm for you, and one for father,” and she stretched an arm around each, saying with childish fondness, “so I tie you together.” The tears gushed from the father’s eyes.

“She is our all – the – world,” said the mother. “Let us forget ourselves, and live for her!” There was a tap at the door. Elise sprang forward and opened it, and brought her father a note. Mrs Tallis recognized Copley’s hand.

Tallis ran his eye over the few scrawled and blotted lines. “You are right, Augusta,” he said; “and we shall go on in our own wretched way – it is a wretched world! There, read the note.”

Appearances were against me,” it said, “and I forgive the blow you gave me. I declare, upon my honor, your wife is blameless. For God’s sake, give no handle to the gossiping world against her. I shall not speak of the unfortunate mistakes of the morning. In justice to your wife, you will not.

H.C.

There is a certain kind of honor recognized among every species of thieves. So thought Tallis, as he took Copley at his word. And so this day passed without any apparent consequences; but the clouds settled down to Rupert Tallis’s horizon – he could not see a beam of promise for a better tomorrow.

For the rest, it was as if it had never been, except – except, that with all the other days of all our lives, this was noted in the book of great account.

We do not like to obtain our moral by any process of distillation; but we cannot help asking, if a parent does not yet make his child pass through the fire to Moloch, when, for the love of money – for stripped bare it is that – he wrests from her the best and happiest uses of life.

Augusta Tallis, at eighteen, loved a young artist. He had no fortune, and no expectation of fortune, for an artist nobly surrenders that, on the threshold of life, for a higher prize. She was willing to live frugally, if she might live happily. Her father willed otherwise. And so the good seed sown abundantly in her heart lay dormant; and vanity and levity, the bad weeds of frivolous society, sprang up, and grew apace.

Chapter 18

“Straws show which way the wind drifts.”

Grace Herbert to Alice Clifton

My Dear Alice:

All other interests are superseded just now by the alarming illness of Eleanor’s boy – her only boy. His illness has come suddenly. But yesterday, he seemed to stand on the hilltop of life, radiant with the rosy tints of morning, casting down into many hearts the hopes and promises of a long, bright day.

They may talk as they will about the equality of the sexes; but a boy, from the moment he comes into the world, takes precedence. Esterly does not love him better, perhaps not so tenderly, as he loves his girls; but in some sort he looks upon him as an extension of himself, as one who is to prolong his name on the earth, to be the heir of his honors, and by whom he shall exist among men after he has passed from them. And as to my dear little sister, why she has loved this boy, not only with a mother’s instincts, but she has seemed to identify him with her husband, and to have a blending of her wifely loyalty with her maternal tenderness; hope, and joy, and pride – pride so sanctified by love, that it is scarcely pride – are centered in her little Herbert.

I have loved him the more, we have all loved him the more, for bearing my dear father’s name – and there the little fellow lies, sinking with this hideous illness. Eleanor is divinely calm; while my poor brother, distracted by parochial cares, comes home to be soothed and upheld by her. Oh, how touching is a strong man’s weakness! How marvelous, weak woman’s strength!

I wonder how I should ever bear such a trial as Ellen’s. Could one fancy a man of fashion in such a scene! Heigho, Alice!”

Thank God! my dear Alice. Eleanor’s boy is pronounced out of danger. I saw him this morning, looking like a cherub, except his mortal paleness. He was sitting up on his bed, leaning on his mother’s bosom. It was such a picture of maternity as the divinest painters have immortalized. The bed and floor were strewn with French toys. The French are artistes, even in this humble craft of toy making. These toys were quite too costly for ‘our money.’ Copley most kindly sent a huge box of them to ‘Erby.’ May was blowing up soap bubbles, enchanting herself as much as her brother, and his father was starting off a train of tiny rail cars – the whole family force employed. What pictures has domestic life!”

We here interrupt the reading of Miss Herbert’s letter, to interpolate some circumstances which she, for reasons no doubt best known to herself, omitted. While she was admiring the nursery tableau vivante she has described, the door was opened by Mrs Esterly’s Irish waitress, who said, “Mr Copley had called to ask after the little boy.”

“You told him Herbert was better, Bridget?” said Mrs Esterly.

“And I did; but he asked, too, was Miss Herbert here?”

“I bade you tell everyone that I was engaged, Bridget,” said Grace.

“But he looked so craving-like, Miss Herbert, I just asked him to walk in, and I would tell yourself.”

“Tell Mr Copley Miss Herbert will be down directly,” said Eleanor, with a smile. “Do go, Grace, and thank him for me, as well as yourself. ‘Erby, darling, shall Aunt Grace tell Mr Copley how much you thank him for all these pretty things?’”

“Yes, mamma, but I am tired of them,” said the child, languidly.

“So you are, Erby,” said little May; “but you aren’t tired of the rail cars papa bought for you?”

Grace went, nothing loath. Clouds in the moral atmosphere are as softening to the heart, as rain is to the earth. Copley’s manifestations of sympathy had brought him into her domestic and interior life. He was no longer the mere drawing room man to her, and when she gave him her hand, she thanked him with a cordial earnestness. His face lighted as she had never before seen it. “You rejoice with us,” she said; “I see you do.”

“Yes; and though you have not seen it, or perhaps thought of it, I have suffered with you. Has your servant told you – I fear not, these Irish are so careless – that I have called twice every day to inquire about you? About the little boy, I mean,” he added, with a smile.

“Oh, yes; we all heard of your kindness.”

“But my dear Gr – Miss Herbert!” he exclaimed, as the color, which the excitement of meeting him had kindled on her cheek, faded, “your watching and anxiety tell sadly upon you. It is a lovely morning, take a turn with me around the square – the air will give you new life.”

Grace shook her head.

“No? then allow me to bring my carriage. You refuse that too? I may send a carriage from a livery stable?”

Grace was too evidently pleased by his concern, but she declined, saying, that though the child was better, he needed more than ever all the resources of mother and aunt to entertain him.

While he continued to urge and she to decline with a tone of her sweet voice that made even denial pleasant to hear, the door was thrown open, and Bridget ushered in Archibald Lisle, saying, “He is in the nursery, sir; I’ll call him down.”

Lisle paused on the threshold as if he felt himself an intruder, as well he might, seeing Copley bending over the chair in which Grace was seated, and talking so earnestly that he did not hear the door opened. Archibald advanced instinctively, feeling it was less awkward to do so than to recede. He was cold and silent, but in this brief moment he had observed with a lover’s acuteness, and interpreted with a lover’s jealousy. Copley’s supercilious bow as he turned and saw him, seemed to him to express the insolence of triumph, and the blush that dyed Grace’s cheek at his startling interruption of the tête-à-tête, indicated the radiant happiness of a young woman in the presence of her lover, forgetting the world, and oblivious of the pressure of anxiety in her sister’s house. “Oh,” thought he, bitterly, “there are many ways of trafficking away the soul!”

“We have neither seen you, Mr Lisle, nor heard from you, for a long while,” said Grace, contrasting, in her own mind, as she filled the awkward silence with this commonplace remark, the devotion of Copley, during their anxieties, with the negligence of Archibald.

“I have been more than usually driven by business of late,” he replied, hardly knowing what he said.

“Oh, business! business!” replied Grace, “it is the slave driver of the North, worse than the dragons of old, that lived on fair damsels and young children. Business in New York devours all the charities of life.”

“There are some fortunate exempts,” retorted Lisle, and conscious that he felt savagely, if he did not appear so, he was relieved by the reappearance of the servant girl, who said, “Mr Esterly is in the nursery, sir, and little Herbert – poor little man – hearing your name, is out of himself to have you come to him, and if you please, the mistress bids me to show you up.”

Archibald went, and was received with enthusiasm by the little people. He had that sort of magnetism for them which comes from loving instincts – children cannot be bribed. All the toys of Paris would not have bought from May the glad shout with which she greeted Archibald’s entrance, or the soft caress of the little boy, as he laid his pale cheek to Lisle’s, and said, “Erby loves you all the world, Archy Lisle!” It mattered not that Lisle had sent no toys, nor that, when he had called in season or out of season to satisfy himself of the condition of his friends, he had not trumpeted the attention, by sending up his name. He was not one of those who light a candle and set it on every molehill. He knew, the Esterlys knew he sympathized in all their joys and sorrows, and that was enough.

When Grace shortly after returned to the nursery, Archibald was in low and earnest conversation with her brother-in-law; her sister was out of the room, and she took her post at the bedside. The little boy was tired and restless, and sending May, who was always a little overexcited by Archy’s presence, away, she applied herself to the task of soothing the sick child.

An old and ugly woman, if she do the work of a nurse, is thereby for the time transformed into one of those “angels that God makes his ministers,” and it was no wonder that Archibald’s eye involuntarily turned upon the bright and beautiful young woman, who, without seeming to be even aware of his presence, was singing snatches of songs to the sick child, telling him stories, and lulling him to sleep with the magnetic strokings of her delicate fingers. His thoughts followed his eye. The mental processes of a lover are rapid, Lisle’s might be summed up in the conclusion, “Oh! that such a woman should be lured into such wretched meshes!”

“You are suddenly abstracted, Lisle,” said Esterly; “in my anxiety to get your opinion in my own affairs, I forgot you told me you had an important cause coming on at one.”

“Bless my heart!” exclaimed Lisle, pulling out his watch, “I forgot it too!”

Esterly was too much absorbed in certain perplexities of his own to draw any inference from this honest confession. The friends parted, and Grace, while watching the sleeping child, resumed her letter to her friend:

Time is the nurse and breeder of all good,” Alice. Bad exhalations from old distrusts are passing off like a morning fog; they will pass and leave my firmament bright to the empyrean. Meanwhile I am patiently waiting the sun’s ascent. Before I proceed, however, let me tell you that my happiness is not all self-centered; our dear little boy is still improving.

Your family’s friend, Archibald Lisle, has just been here; he is as changeful as the weather. Down stairs he was cold and abstracted, but when he came into the nursery, to the children, his heart seemed made of combustibles, and they, little incendiaries, fired it.

My dear little patient is waking. Farewell for the present.”

At Grace’s last suspension of her letter to Alice, she was confident of the child’s recovery. Dreadful are the vicissitudes of severe illness. But two days passed when she was summoned to her sister by a messenger who said, “The child is dying!” Grace was rushing through the entry when Mrs Herbert, who had caught the news, called out, “Grace! Grace! stop one moment, dear! Let me go in your place. Calmness is essential on such occasions, and I am always calm – do you hear me, Grace?”

“Yes, yes – yes, ma’am!” said Grace, and rushed through the outer door, and out of sight. Ten minutes brought her to Eleanor’s nursery. She opened the door with a throbbing heart, and stood still at its threshold. The spirit of the child had passed on, and had left the impress and beauty of its immortality on the painless, lifeless form.

The agony of the wrench of separation was over, and the parents were kneeling before their dead child with an expression of meek acceptance of their Father’s will, best interpreted by those words distilled by faith from mortal anguish, “Thou hast given and thou hast taken away – blessed be thy name!”

Little May was lying on the bed beside her brother, probably with no comprehension of the change to him, for her glowing cheek touched his, and her arm was thrown caressingly over him. Eleanor’s head rested on her husband’s bosom, her eyes were raised. She was as still as her dead child. There was no agitation, no sign of emotion but in her mortal paleness, in the deep crimson spots that stained her white throat, and in her tight grasp of little May’s hand. Grace spoke not a word, uttered no sound, but fell on her knees beside her sister, and with all the fervor of her spirit joined in the prayer Esterly was offering in a low, tremulous, but not sad voice. There were no outbreaking, irrepressible expressions of grief; his prayer was rather a thank-offering for the gift of the boy, for the sweet blessing of his two years of life, for his passage through the gates of immortality before temptation had assailed him, or the world in any way stained him; for his safe wardship in Jesus’s arms, instead of their imperfect care. Esterly was not conscious of Grace’s presence. If he had been, he might have hesitated to pour out, as he did, with a new feeling of its worth and force, his sense of the perfect fusion of his heart with Eleanor’s in the fires of their afflictions – “Our day had been bright,” he said, “but now our night is made to shine even as the day, and to our true affection the darkness and the light are both one.”

We should not have presumed to withdraw the veil from this sacred home experience, but for the inevitable necessity of showing its effect on Grace. She remained at her sister’s for the two trying days that followed, and then having returned home, she added to her long letter to Alice the final particulars of the child’s illness, and thus closed it:

Dear Alice, I never saw death till now. I should rather say, till now I never saw life, for that which to common experience is death, seems to my sister and brother to be the breaking of the seals of eternal life – their Easter morning.

I wondered to see Eleanor so calm. I wondered, as she told me of the last hours, how she had borne the supplicating glances of her boy’s eye appealing to her for help – the loving grasp of his little hand, the soft murmur of his trembling lips – the last kiss – the last sigh.”

These have been sacred hours to us all; but these even did not pass without a ruffling of my serenity. Copley sent my sister a basket of the loveliest white flowers. May was present when they were brought in, and when her mother said, ‘Come with me, Grace, and place these around our dear little boy,’ May ran away, and just as we had arranged the flowers, she reappeared, her apron filled with white azalias, and violets stripped hastily from their stems. ‘Here, mamma,’ she said, ‘do take away those flowers Mr Copley sent. I don’t want them to be around “Erby.’” ‘My dear!’ said Eleanor, shaking her head; but May would not be repressed. ‘Oh, mamma, do,’ she said, ‘Erby would like my flowers best; I know he would, because he knows Mr Lisle gave them to me. I have picked them – everyone – for him – Mr Lisle won’t care.’ Tears were on the earnest little thing’s cheeks. I saw Eleanor hesitated. I fancied she partook May’s feeling. I clutched all Copley’s flowers, and threw them into the grate, and then rushed to my own room, self-condemned. Is there a detective power in the innocence of childhood? What think you, Alice? ‘No falsehood can endure touch of celestial temper.’

Eleanor pitied more than she blamed me, I know; for when we met at dinner, she drew me to her, and kissed me with more even than her usual sisterly tenderness.

We had the funeral service at twilight. Esterly went through it steadily. The words of our beautiful service seemed to come as freshly from his soul as if they had never before been uttered, and with as divine a power.

To me it was significant that Archibald Lisle was present with the only two other friends invited, and that Horace Copley was not there, though he had called every day since the boy first sickened, to inquire for him, and in every way has manifested a friend’s interest. And yet, I, even I, Alice, should have felt him out of place in such a scene! Is not this a dreadful confession?

The white azalias encircled the dear child’s shining curls like a halo, and the sweet violets were laid upon his breast. I heard May whisper to Archibald Lisle, ‘Aren’t you glad I gave all my flowers to “Erby?’” He answered her satisfactorily, kissing her, and patting her cheek.

And thus has ended this chapter in my sister’s married life! Never before have I seen so demonstrated God’s infinite blessing on a true marriage; how it gives strength to weakness, how it takes the bitter from disappointment, the sting from sorrow; how it gives the ‘silver lining’ to the darkest cloud, how it helps the loving pilgrims heavenward, how, dear Alice, it is heaven!

And the reverse of the picture! I dare not look at it; how surely God’s curse follows the vows lightly spoken – base motived – the ill assorted marriage, what a mockery it is of God and nature! God be merciful to us, Alice!;

Farewell

Chapter 19

“A few forsake the throng, with lifted eyes

Ask wealth of Heaven, and gain a real prize.”

There was no bitterness in Eleanor’s affliction – no dregs in her sorrow. For years to come there must be a burning about her heart, and a moistening of her eye, when her thoughts turned to the lost boy who had left a lifelong aching vacancy in her home that no other child could fill; but her resignation was perfect, and, therefore, so was her peace. Her external condition was most prosperous. She had respect and love, and troops of friends, and she had not what most people, affluent in happy circumstances are pretty sure to get up, a domestic manufactory of petty miseries. Her hours, from early dawn till late evening, were filled with thoughts and doings for others, that left her no time for insolent repinings, and petty egotisms. If she were assailed by neuralgia and dyspepsia, they made no inroads within her intrenchments of temperance, activity and cheerfulness. “Sickly ladies” expressed their wonder at her power of accomplishing, “but you are so strong, Mrs Esterly,” they said; and nervous victims would exclaim, “how fortunate you are, dear Mrs Esterly, in having no nerves;” in the sweet security of their self-complacency they never imagined that her superiority was not so much in the machine as in the fidelity that regulated it.

But to Eleanor there came, as comes to all in the battle of life, a trial that tested that strength which is made perfect in human weakness.

Her husband had been for some time, as we have already intimated, assailed by doubts of the soundness of points of faith which he had publicly professed and pledged himself to inculcate. His health was at first impaired by a natural ambition to sustain a reputation exaggerated by popular favor; then came this “Giant Doubt” to wrestle with, to conquer, or himself be conquered. His days were given to the spiritual wants and social exactions of his people, at night he encroached on the hours of sleep, to pursue his theological investigations. His conscience became morbid, and his temper irritable, and of course the free communication of all his anxieties and perplexities, and also the unrestrained outflow of the petulance resulting from an overtaxed mind and body were reserved for her whom he most trusted, and best loved. These are tribulations the adored girl little dreams of when she makes the promise “for better and for worse.” Eleanor’s love was her angel through this fiery furnace.

“Unwearied, unobnoxious to be pained

By wound,”

abated. But Eleanor’s virtue was not merely feminine endurance. She relieved her husband of the drudgery of his researches, and often aided him with the suggestions of her sound judgment, unbiased by transmitted prejudices, and unobscured by scholastic sophistries. He acknowledged her help, comparing himself to a traveler through a tangled forest, confused by opposing and uncertain lights, who, ever and anon, catches a ray from the polar star, and thence is sure of his course.

Poor Esterly struggled on, as many a man has done, in the pursuit of absolute truth, till at last he came humbly to receive just as much as it pleased God to make plain to him, and meekly to believe that this was enough for his salvation. But what was to become of all the rest which he had received as proven truth, and promised so to dispense? Born and bred in the church, his most sacred associations were with it. His mother’s voice blended with its prayers and catechism; its rites and service were sacred to him. Its history, from its first resistance to tyranny and bigotry to its present imperial position, was dear to him; and he felt that he had a son’s portion in the patrimony transmitted from its glorious apostles and martyrs. This must be surrendered, or he must appear before the world in false colors.

There was but one truth for him, and he accepted it. He must make public his unfitness to fulfill the requisitions of the office he had assumed; he must, in short, resign his rectorship. Still, no loving husband and father, with a manly sense of his responsibilities, could, without much suffering, resign position, competency, and security – the means by which he lives – and take the chances of poverty, and external degradation.

The comforts and luxuries of life, its roast beef and plum pudding, are the oil that keeps the machinery of society in operation. They are the bribes that sustain the unflinching faith of the sectarian, and the partizan zeal of the patriot at Washington. The arguments of the Southern cotton planter and the Northern manufacturer may be reduced to this element; and so may the lies of trade through all the vicious mazes of its competitions. He only who fears God, and loves truth more than he fears labor and dreads poverty, can command the acquittal of his conscience, and “the glorious privilege of being independent.”

It was Eleanor’s custom, when her other daily duties were finished, to sit with her husband in his study, reading with him, writing for him, and sewing beside him.

They were thus sitting together late one morning, when he, having finished, sealed, and directed a letter, said, with an expression of relief, shaded by sadness, “There – it is done, dear Nelly, and now we are on the wide world.” The letter was a resignation of his rectorship, addressed to officers of the church. “We must give up our pleasant home on the first of May, and end our six years of worldly favor and ease in our possessions.”

“And we shall turn over a new leaf, Frank, and begin a new chapter in life,” said Eleanor, cheerfully.

Esterly looked at her for a moment, his eyes filling with tears of tenderness. “Yes, Eleanor,” he said, “a new chapter – with struggle for me, and endurance for you, for its motto.”

“No, dear husband,” she said, in a courageous tone, that contrasted with his tremulous voice; “struggle and endurance are for both, and for all, and for the whole book of life. It comes under different forms, and with divers names, and whether it comes with blessing or otherwise, depends on ourselves. Now, truly,” she added, rising and stroking the hair from his cold, damp brow, “I have but one fear for the future – and that is, that you, with your generous nature, will think it quite right to have anxieties for me and the children. Dismiss them, dear husband. Remember our partnership is without limitation, or condition. You must not have all the work, and I the play – you the struggle, as you say, and I the endurance. You shall command the ship, as you have done; but I must have my own little ventures on board.”

“I do not quite understand you, Eleanor.”

“Never mind – you shall tomorrow; you will be stronger and happier, now this burden is off your mind, and you can go forth with no responsibility to other people’s consciences.”

“I am stronger and quieter already; don’t you perceive how your little hand has calmed down the throbbing of my temples? I think, Nelly, it communicates a magnetic charm from your tranquil spirit – love is the true magnetism. Oh, my wife, what a poor, helpless wretch I should be without you!”

There was an unsealed note on Eleanor’s writing desk. We shall take the liberty to transcribe it. It was addressed to the principal of the most flourishing boarding school in New York – a lady so devoted to the duties of her responsible station, so noble in her liberality, and unquestionable in her disinterestedness, that she has done much to redeem the term “boarding-school” from the dishonor heaped upon it by accumulated abuses.

My Dear Miss H

Thank you, for the list of scholars – fifteen in your school! These, with the promised five out of it, will supply the deficiencies in our income the next year; and thus, if we make a fortunate disposition of our house, my husband will be enabled to repair his strength by a year’s travel in Europe, and rest from work. Thank you, too, for your assurance that I do not interfere with your accomplished musical professor, as my lower terms, according with my inferior ability, also accord with my pupils’ smaller means. And thank you, more than all, for your gentle warning, lest, in my eagerness to afford my husband material aid, I lose sight of my first duty; that to my children and household. They are providentially cared for. An elderly cousin of my husband, Effie Lynn, has just lost her home. We are glad to give her the shelter of our’s. She is a delicately strung, nervous little body, and will, in a way, increase my cares; but she will also immensely relieve them, as, being most kind, faithful, and fond of children, I can tranquilly leave my girls with her during my working hours.

Yours gratefully,

E.E.

There are worlds in this sphere of ours as far apart as heaven and earth. At the hour of the scene in the rector’s study, Miss Anne Carlton returned in her carriage from a “charity sewing circle” to Bond Street, and entering the room, where her mother was casting up her weekly accounts, she subdued her voice on seeing Mr Herbert taking, in his armchair, one of those frequent naps by which he judiciously refreshed tired nature, and said, “Oh, mamma, I have the strangest news to tell you – I see you have heard it?”

“Yes, I had a note from Eleanor. Of course, she would not leave me to hear it from common report – she knows what is due to me.”

“She is perfection, I do think; I am so sorry for her! Is it not dreadful Mr Esterly should take such a kink? What can he expect? So admired as he has been, not to be satisfied!”

“I do not view it quite in the light of a kink, Anne. Religious differences should be respected. Mr Esterly has a right to his opinions.”

“Of course he has; but why could he not keep them to himself? He need not proclaim them. I never give myself the trouble to think about opinions, and never could see the use of them, one way or the other.” Was Uncle Walter smiling in his sleep? “For my part,” continued the young lady, “I think it is positively wicked of him.”

“No, my dear Anne, you go too far – not wicked – very unwise, very injudicious, I allow. If Mr Esterly has unfortunately departed from the strict creed of the Church, it has been since his settlement, and of course he is under no obligation to proclaim it. His people would take it for granted that he is all right. He is a little crotchety, but he is conscientious and very exemplary. It is a great advantage in our Church that the creed and prayers are all written down, and therefore the clergyman is quite relieved from responsibility. On days when sermons must be preached on particular doctrines he could easily get some one to supply his pulpit without incurring suspicion. All life is a compromise, as I often say, Anne, and a man who has a wife and children has duties to them. I certainly do not blame Mr Esterly for his opinions; I have always been tolerant and hope I always shall be. I believe there are many good Christians in every denomination, but I agree with you, Anne, in thinking it is very inconsiderate in him to resign his place – such sort of men always run into vagaries. It is not so much matter what is in the mind, as that its balance should be preserved.”

Miss Anne yawned demonstratively and said, “I wonder what in the world is to become of them?”

“Hush, my child!” replied the mother, pointing to Mr Herbert, and then added in a lowered voice, “I would invite them here for a few months, for Eleanor’s sake, but you know the noise of children is peculiarly trying to me, and at my time of life the doctor says, ‘one must not undertake too much.’ Besides Eleanor writes me they have a plan for the future – probably a school.”

“A school! How dreadful to have such near connections teaching a school – earning their bread – thank heaven, they are not blood relations!”

“No, they are not.” Mrs Herbert had forgotten her once rejoicing in a remote blood tie to her husband’s family. “And besides, Anne, Frank did earn his living when he preached.”

“Yes, but that’s so much more gentlemanly.”

Walter Herbert rose, surveyed the ladies, and laughed aloud with little politeness, perhaps, and certainly with less mirth, and left the apartment.

“Did they vex you, Uncle Walter?” asked Grace, at the conclusion of a conversation on the subject which had startled the household.

“For a moment, my child, not longer. Anne is a silly little goose. What do chirping birds of her feather know of this earnest working world of ours? You sigh, Grace! Do you regret the step Frank has taken?”

“Regret, Uncle Walter, that my brother has acted sincerely, courageously? no, he would have denied his higher nature not to have acted thus. I sighed at comparing myself, an idler as I am, in God’s field, to Eleanor. I saw her this morning as bright as the sun, and she intermits her activity as little. She will go on with her German emigrant class, though she has engaged pupils in music that she may stave off anxiety from Frank.”

“Anxiety is Frank’s infirmity, and she knows it, and provides against it, like the best of wives as she is. What a healing balsam is such a temper as hers to the inevitable corrosions of married life! Yes, I rejoice that Frank has been true to his convictions – a pity he is lost to the church. As I have lived, so will I die in it!”

Chapter 20

“A bitter and perplexed ‘What shall I do?’

Is worse to man than worst necessity.”

When Grace returned from the funeral at her sister’s house to her own home, Mrs Herbert, after little a-hem-ing, said, “Grace, I wish to consult you – or rather, I wished to say to you that I hope and trust Eleanor’s feelings will not be wounded by Anne not putting on mourning.” Grace made no reply, and the lady proceeded, “It may appear odd to see you in mourning and Anne in gay colors – they are wearing very gay colors just now – but poor Anne has just received her orders from Paris, and it would be a trial, you know, to lay such lovely things aside, and see all the world coming out in fresh fashions before her. Next Sunday is Easter Sunday, you know!” Still Grace made no answer, and she proceeded, “What style of mourning do you propose, Grace? I hope not bombazine.”

“Indeed, Mrs Herbert, I have not thought about it – nor, I believe, has my sister. We shall wear what others wear in like circumstances. Our dressmaker, the representative of that august tribunal ‘the world,’ will arrange the proprieties of the outside – what is under it we shall take care of ourselves.”

“My dear Grace, I did not mean to hurt your feelings, but I must say I do think Eleanor has thought about it. She has such a well-balanced mind. I apologized at the funeral for my bonnet; though it was quite plain, you know – I have never worn high colors since your father’s death – I do not think them suitable for a widow, but my bonnet certainly was not quite the thing for the funeral, being rather a lively brown velvet, you know. I told Eleanor that Lawson had not sent home my mourning bonnet, and she answered me so sweetly, so like herself!”

“What did Eleanor say, ma’am?”

“Why, she said I had always been so very kind to little Herbert, that she was sure I should do everything that was right.”

“Are you not content to leave it there, ma’am? I am!” and Grace went to her own apartment, leaving her stepmother wondering that her sister’s affliction had not at all softened her; and Grace sharing the wonder in her own way, for as she mounted the stairs she said to herself, “If I and my stepmother meet in heaven, will the first word she speaks to me rasp my nerves?”

As she opened her own door, a fresh bouquet and a note on her table from Copley struck her eye. She filled a Bohemian glass vase with water and was about to put the flowers in, when the remembrance of little May’s antipathy to “old Copley’s flowers” struck her like an oracle, and she wavered between throwing the bouquet in the fire, or cherishing it in the water. “What a child! what a dastardly fool I am!” she exclaimed aloud, and placed them in the centre of her table. She then opened the note, written on exquisite French paper, stamped with Copley’s crest and initials, written, folded, and sealed with a pedantic elegance, that does not indicate ‘thoughts that breathe and words that burn.’ It began with gentlemanly commonplaces of sympathy for the Esterlys, and proceeded to express the intense anxiety he had felt for her. The note was filled with exhalations of passionate admiration. Grace pondered over each elaborated phrase, searching, as an alchemist would for gold, for one spontaneous effusion of feeling, and finally she threw it down, ejaculating, “I hate this way of writing – if he loves me, why does he not tell me so simply and directly, and ask my love in return – could I answer him simply – directly?” She shook her head in painful doubt. Suddenly an inspiration, as she fancied, came to her. Persons of Grace’s temperament are apt to mistake impulses for inspirations.

In her desire to relieve the monotonous frivolity of her life, Grace had repeatedly been present at the “circles,” the technical designation of those séances, where the natural laws are supposed to be suspended, that fond mortals may hold social communion with immortals. She had become interested in a belief which relates to the mysterious elements of our being, and which she found implicitly accepted by a few sound minds and many honest ones – “men veracious, nowise mad.”

On one occasion she had gone, at the invitation of a friend, to a large house in one of our finest streets, where a suite of elegant apartments were devoted to the reception of the spirits. The walls were garnished with fitting pictures, large sheets of parchment with costly frames, on which were written texts of Scripture in all known tongues, and the autographs of the signers of our Independence, interspersed with those of emperors, popes, philosophers, and poets from Homer to L. E. L., and from Aristotle to Jonathan Edwards; all these worthies having condescendingly visited the apartment of a poor divinity student, and there inscribed their names. While Grace was looking at these records, smiling incredulously, her eye was caught by a sybil, who, in a trance, was giving to the commandant at — a communication from his daughter, who had recently died. It was such as might come from the beatified spirit of a child – tears poured down the soldier’s cheek – Grace felt herself irresistibly drawn into the circle, and beside the “medium.” She was not young, but just on the confines of middle age; her form was attenuated, and her skin so colorless and transparent, her form and face so spiritualized, that it seemed as if at any moment her earthly tenement might dissolve. Suddenly she opened wide her half-closed eyes, and fixed them, as if spellbound, on Grace. Every eye followed hers to the beautiful and excited young woman. The blood rushed to Grace’s cheek.

“There is,” said the sybil to her, in a low, earnest voice, “a spirit present that will give you a written communication – if you wish – not else.”

“I do not wish it,” said Grace firmly, governed by her previous cool judgment. “Some other time,” she whispered to the friendly medium, “I may ask for what I now decline.”

“You do not look,” replied the spiritualist, with a sad smile, “like one of the ‘church of Laodicea.’”

Grace made no reply, but by a fervid grasp of the hand, and hastily withdrawing from what was becoming to her a “charmed” circle. This visit occurred just before the death of Eleanor’s child. Now, perplexed by Copley’s note – wishing for a better faith, and, yet distrustful of him, and dissatisfied with her own self-examination, she recurred to the medium. She had, since their meeting, heard much of her. Many believed in her preternatural powers, and no one had the audacious scepticism to question her sincerity. Grace was not a believer in mesmerism, spiritualism, and other kindred discoveries, (?) but, highly imaginative, she hovered on their confines, and sometimes fancied she perceived definite truths in their obscure regions. Grace had been told that this medium had the power of extracting from a letter the spirit and character of its writer, by simply laying it on her bosom, without opening it. She had seen striking evidences of this potent gift in rhapsodies written down while the infusions of the letter writer’s mind predominated over the medium’s.

Grace ordered a carriage, and in the twilight set off to find the residence of the seeress. She found in the outskirts of the city a small, quaint old Dutch house perched on the top of a sandhill nearly undermined by the leveling processes of city improvement. Few of its cotemporary tenements are standing. Scarcely a material vestige, a gable, or a pointed window, remains of the venerable Knickerbockers; yet, thanks to the genius of our Irving – God bless him! – these primitive homes, and their sage proprietors are, to the mind’s eye, intact and indestructible.

“Fit abode for an astrologer, oracle, seeress, ‘medium,’” thought Grace, as she ascended the almost perpendicular steps to the door, divided horizontally into two equal parts. At the call of the massive knocker, the head of a “little marchioness” peeped over the lower section, who, on being told that Miss Herbert had private business with Miss Ida Roorbach, led her up a dark staircase to an attic apartment, where, after lighting the three burners of a tall Roman lamp, she went to summon her mistress. She, as her name indicated, was of mixed blood, her Dutch father having married one of those omnipresent aspirants, a Yankee itinerant teacher. The seeress probably owed her spiritual inquisitiveness to the maternal source, as the Dutch superstitions were of the material order, concerning themselves chiefly with haunted houses, and human subjects. The apartment, frugally furnished, was decorated with beautiful engravings of Raphael’s Sybils, Michael Angelo’s Fates, and the heads of eccentric men and women of genius. Most conspicuous among these last was that of the great social reformer, Fourier! These were cheaply and ingeniously framed with pine cones, or braided strings of the more delicate cones of the hemlock. Each was surmounted by a chaplet woven of dried oak leaves, of laurel or myrtle, as symbolically suited the portrayed individual. Odd volumes of Carlisle, Emerson, Miss Barrett, and Browning, were intermingled with German mysticism. A ponderous volume of Emanuel Swedenborg laid open on the table. Grace smiled as she read its title, and the thought crossed her that it might serve her oracle instead of the intoxicating fumes from the Delphic cave. The inkstand on the table was Persian, and all its adjuncts, the paper cutter, sealing lamp, etc., had a suggestive form or quality. Grace had the curiosity to examine a set of seals strung on a hooped serpent. Every one of them had either an inscrutable device or an inscription in a language unknown to her. But, perhaps the most characteristic of all these objets de mystère was a very beautiful half finished sketch by Ida Roorbach herself, in which she was attempting to embody the vision of a certain notorious disciple of Mesmer, who reports that being in the room, and in the midst of the weeping friends of a poor old woman in death agony with a hideous disease, he fell into the mesmeric state, and saw, as death overcame the mortal, the immortal overcoming death. The spiritual form gradually evolved, till, at the last breath, disengaged and glowing with etherealized youth and beauty, it rose, floated off, and received by loving and caressing spirits, it disappeared, wreathed in their arms!

Archibald Lisle had told Grace of this vision, which greatly excited her imagination at the time, and she now felt as if she were breathing a preternatural atmosphere. She started, recalled to the actual world by the opening of the door, and the ingliding of the genius loci. Grace stood for a moment embarrassed, and really awe-stricken, though to a rational observer, there seemed nothing in the little modest woman before her to inspire such an emotion. To be sure she was pale and attenuated to the last degree, and looked as if her venture upon supernatural power had been visited with the curse of Prometheus’s audacity, but not like his had her vitality been reproduced.

After a moment, while the Pythoness waited with an expression of benign inquiry, Grace said, stammeringly, “You will excuse my intrusion – I want to ask a favor from you – help.”

“Of me?” she replied, looking up half incredulously at Grace, who, in the power of youth, beauty, and elegance, stood head and shoulders above her. “Remember you once rejected help proffered through me – you seemed then self-poised – self-reliant.”

“I am not so – I am not,” cried Grace, vehemently – “I am staggering in the dark, and want light, more than ever mortal wanted it.”

Ida Roorbach smiled seriously, and shook her head. “We should try natural, customary, providential means of self-enlightenment,” she said, “before we resort to such as should be reserved for perplexing exigencies.”

“Mine is a most perplexing exigency,” replied Grace, and then added, for she dared not evade the simplicity and truth that impressed her with reverence, “No, perhaps I have not sought counsel where I should, but other’s judgments are fallible as well as mine – I want unerring guidance.”

“A revelation? I can not give it.”

“No, not a revelation, but an intuition, an inspiration – a preternatural impression – I know not what you call it. Dear madam, I want you to read a letter for me –”

“I have no preternatural power, friend. Perhaps I have a deeper experience of the potency of nature than some others have. It is by shutting out the disturbances of the outer world, and wholly committing and assigning myself to my spiritual nature that I learn how far its sphere extends – few know theirs, simply because they do not prove it. It is no new thing that I tell you. ‘He who believeth in nature,’ says Paracelsus, ‘will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith.’ You have brought me a letter to read?”

“Yes – but perhaps you know me, and may surmise –”

“No, young lady, I do not know you. I have seen you but once, and then I think you distrusted me – perhaps not remembering that the Gospel, even the good news, was committed to those humble in the world, and weak in the flesh. As to ‘surmising,’” she added, with dignity, “I never surmise; that would be untruth to myself. But come, friend, give me your riddle to read.”

“You do not know the handwriting?” said Grace, giving her Copley’s letter.

“I never look at the handwriting. My apprehension is not through the eye. The writer’s mind is transfused into mine; for the moment I lose my self-consciousness and receive another’s. Nor does the purport of the letter signify. It may be written simply in good faith, or it may contain the elaborated glosses of falsehood. It is the spirit of the writer which is manifested in me, and to me.” She drew a chair for Grace, and one for herself, but before sitting down, “I can not oblige you,” she said, “unless you first assure me that your correspondent is free from bodily disease. I have already suffered much physical malady, through the inscrutable effect, on my nervous system, of this letter reading. I have had temporary deafness, blindness, indescribable pain, paralysis, and permanent debility.” Grace assured her there was no risk in the present case. She gazed at the seeress with a throbbing heart, as she sat down and, glancing at the pictures on the wall, fixed her large, blue, prominent, calm eye on the Parcoe of Michael Angelo. Her simplicity, the guilelessness of her manner, her freedom from all charlatanrie, her faith in herself, inspired Grace with a conviction of her truth and her power; and all combined, heightened the solemnity with which she awaited a revelation from the arcana of nature. The oracle laid the letter on her bosom, and kept it there by the firm pressure of her hand. Her head was slightly raised, and her eyes, half veiled by her drooping lids, remained steadfast to the picture. There was not the slightest movement or apparent quickening of her pulses, for the space of a quarter of an hour. Then came the faintest hue of color in her pale cheek; it deepened, the blood mounted, the veins in her broad forehead swelled, and her brow contracted, her mouth took a sinister expression, her eyes glanced craftily from side to side, and she shrunk, as if eluding observation. Then, springing to her feet, she threw the letter into the fire, as St Paul shook the viper from his hand, sank back in her chair, and covered her face.

After some moments of silence, unbroken save by the loud beating of poor Grace’s heart, Ida Roorbach’s countenance recovered its usual sweet and composed expression, and beckoning Grace to her, for she was too much exhausted to rise, she laid her ghastly hand on her and said tenderly, in a low, quivering voice, “I could not speak – my lips were sealed; and having been so by an irresistible power, I can not, dare not, now unseal them.”

“But why – oh tell me, why you looked so? Why had your face that hateful expression?”

“I do not know how I looked,” she replied, mournfully.

“Tell me, then, how you felt – why you threw the letter in the fire, as if it stung you?”

Ida Roorbach hesitated, and then said, with decision, “My friend, I feel that I am not permitted to impart to you what I experienced. My duty is made clear to me. A heathen woman,” she continued, pointing to the picture of the Fates, “might ask her destiny of those ‘children of night and daughters of necessity;’ but now, my eye is turned to the dayspring from on high, and the word borne into my mind to speak to you is, ‘work out your own salvation!’”

Grace returned to her home. She had opened the book of prophesy, and it was steeped in shadows. She tried the thousand-times repeated experiment of Icarus, and the wings had dropped in the forbidden element, under the stern law, “thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.”

Chapter 21

“Who sees not the bottom, let him not pass the water.”

Miss Herbert went in, on her way to her sister’s, to Steinberg’s music shop. He was not there. The door was ajar that communicated with a little inner parlor; and while she was tossing over some sheets of music on the counter, she heard voices. One was cheerful, and familiar; the other low, and “full of tears.”

“Letty,” said Lisle, “I see you are not well – you are working too hard.”

“Oh no, indeed I am not; my work is my life.”

“Then the children torment you?”

“No, Archy, they are very good, and they love me, and I love them.”

“Then the long and the short of it is, our evening lessons are too much for you. I shall come no more.”

“Oh, Archy, don’t say so.”

“What is the use, Letty, of wearing yourself out? You read German well enough, and you are learning of the Steinbergs to speak it charmingly.”

“Well, Archy, do as you think best; it must be a weary task for you.” The meek are not always blessed!

“No indeed, dear Letty, it is a pleasure – a very great pleasure.”

“Then continue to come; do, Archy – I have no other pleasure,” she added, in a more cheerful tone; but the last word did not reach Grace’s ear, for the children at this moment made an inroad, followed by old Steinberg, who passed into the shop. He was interrupted in his excuses, by Grace asking if those were his children?

“Mein Gott! no, Miss Herbert; my old woman and I are not Abraham and Sarah. These are my grand-children that Mr Lisle, that gentleman in there, God bless him, took charge of from Germany, and has brought us the best little governess for them. You speak German, will you look in upon them?”

While Grace hesitated, Lisle came into the shop. The sight of Miss Herbert checked him. He blushed, merely bowed, and passed on. The blush, only a suffusion caused by the sudden meeting, recalled Mrs Milnor’s gossip at Mrs Tallis’ reception. Grace gave no faith to it then, or now; but her curiosity was awakened, and her feminine imagination had woven a tissue out of Letty’s sweet and sad tones; so she graciously accepted the old man’s invitation, and followed him. She recognized at the first glance the pale, pretty girl in half mourning whom she had seen at the opera.

“Excuse,” said old Steinberg, addressing Letty, “this is Miss Herbert, just looking in upon the little ones.”

At the sound of this name, Letty’s pale cheek reddened, and her soft, meek eye met Grace’s. Both gazed enquiringly, and both, feeling the gaze might be offensive, averted their eyes. Letty shrinking from the potent lady, whom it seemed presumption to regard as a rival, and Grace averting her eye with a feeling that might be thus translated into words: “Had that fellow, Belson, the audacity to eye this sweet, modest young woman with suspicion? How savage was Mrs Milnor’s gossip!”

“My friend, Mr Lisle – or rather your friend,” she said, “for I believe he is much more yours than mine – is your teacher?”

“My teacher!” exclaimed Letty, overpowered by the grace of Miss Herbert’s practiced manner; “oh! no; Mr Lisle is not my teacher, not at all – he only – that is – I mean he only comes.”

“To give you German readings,” said Grace, smiling, and anxious to relieve poor Letty’s embarrassment. “I know no man one would rather call master in all ‘arts and moralities,’ than Mr Lisle.”

“So, so – just so!” exclaimed old Steinberg, rubbing his hands; “but, Miss Herbert, I have not told you my little ones’ names yet.” This duty he eagerly did, and Grace, after kindly chatting with them, to their delight, in German, took her leave. Letty heaved a sigh, as if lifting a load from her heart. Afterward, the following sentences, blotted, with tears, were found in her private diary:

“We have different spheres. Theirs is the same – mine immeasurably below them. But her love is not like mine! She speaks of him without faltering. The very sound of his name touches my heart’s mainspring.

“Go on, bright, noble, captivating woman! Fulfill your destiny and his – and oh, may I be hidden in His merciful arms, who will forgive his weak and erring child, that she loved the creature more than the Creator!”

As Grace emerged from Steinberg’s shop, she met Horace Copley. He, of course, joined her, and after some commonplace references to the affliction in her sister’s family, he said, surveying her appreciatingly, “What becoming mourning you have selected!”

“My milliner must have the credit of it,” said Grace, blushing, “for I have been but once out of the house since our little boy’s death.” Grace’s blush was due to the thought that the exception was her visit to Ida Roorbach.

“I am delighted to meet you just now,” resumed Copley; “I have something special to say to you.”

“Not yet – oh, not quite yet!” Grace would have said, but she merely murmured “Well?”

“It is well – or will be, I trust,” he replied. Grace felt a recoiling as, looking up at Copley, she met one of those inquisitorial glances by which he seemed to divine her inmost thoughts. His face reverted to its ordinary expression, as incommunicative as the cover of a book. He proceeded coolly, “This demission of your brother-in-law is a sad affair.” Grace breathed a long breath. “I mean of course, as a matter of discretion – with his family, and in his state of health. It occurred to me that I might do him a small service in this exigency. The President is my friend. He owes me a good turn. I have written to the White House, and the answer is everything I could wish. Of course, nothing of this should transpire till we ascertain whether Mr Esterly will accept the appointment. There are many applicants for it, and it is a delicate matter to manage these affairs so as to give the least possible offence in political quarters. Political adherents, like lovers, are not fond of others’ leavings. Will you speak to your brother-in-law? I am not in his good graces – he is, you know, whimsical – he may not relish accepting a favor from me, but will be quite willing to owe it to you – as it would be idle to deny that he does.”

“Oh, no – to you, and a most seasonable kindness it is. My brother is not whimsical – he may perhaps be prejudiced.”

Nothing so commonplace, as the old adage of “killing two birds with one stone,” probably occurred to Mr Horace Copley, but he smiled to the very inmost fold of his heart as he perceived he had hit one mark. Worldly-wise as he was, he marred his advantage the very next time he opened his lips. Truly, “the devil is subtle, but weaves a coarse web.” “I should not perhaps have said,” he resumed, “that Mr Esterly is whimsical, but, poor fellow, he is impracticable. It was an imprudent step to throw up his rectorship. A man who has a wife and children can not afford to follow out his speculative notions – his duties to them are paramount – ”

“To truth?” Grace thought, and would have said, but that her attention was suddenly arrested by two men who stood on the steps of Esterly’s church, and just in the shadow of its arched entrance. They were talking earnestly, and seemed watching Grace and Copley as they turned into the gate leading to the parsonage which adjoined the extreme end of the church. Twice the men moved forward, as if to follow them, and then retreated. In the mean time Copley rang the doorbell, and the bell not being immediately answered, Grace observed that all the blinds were closed. “Ah, I remember,” she said, “they were going out of town for a day or two.” Just then, a shuffling step was heard in the entry, and Diana, the old colored cook first opening the side blind, and peeping out, unbolted the door, and opening it, hastily said, “It’s you, Miss Grace – Lord o’ macy! come in. Come in, Mr Copley – step quick, please sir.”

“Why, what is the matter, Diana?” said Grace; “what has happened?”

“Nothing has happened to our folks, it’s only to me and mine.” Big tears rolled down Diana’s black cheeks; she wiped them away with the end of her white turban. Diana’s coiffure was very unlike the goddess’ whose name she illustrated.

Grace took a long breath, but her more immediate fears relieved, her interest turned to the poor old petted servant whose alarm and agitation were pitiable. “Do come into the parlor, Miss Grace,” she said; “please follow, Mr Copley.” She turned again to the window, and took a survey through the lattice. “The hounds is gone, for the present,” she continued, “but the Lord have macy on us, they’ll come back, there’s no saving of her.”

“Who are they, Diana?” asked Grace. “What are they after?”

“What! – why, Miss Grace – Vi’let! True as you live! and her little boy.”

“Violet and little Prince! Is Augustus’ wife a slave, Diana?”

“She is that – we never let on about it – ’case, says I to ’Gus, when you set a secret a travelin’, you never knows how far it will go, nor whose doors it will go into. But they got wind of it somehow – them that’s mean enough to turn aginst their own color – and they informed. Vi’let says there’s been evil eyes round ’em for a month. As God lives, for every penny them gets for hunting down their fellow-sufferin’ creters, they shall ’count to him who marks all their tears and groans, and flutterin’s. ‘Ashes always flies back in the face of them that throws’ em.’ Vi’let says they had a larum every hour that set their hearts a beatin’ like a drum. Last night Gus’ brought them here, hopin’ Miss Eleanor would open up a way somehow for em’, and maybe she would, for she’s kind o’ ’raculous at helpin’ folks in ’stress, but la! she’s gone, and Mr Esterly and I am here alone to fight it out with them fellows. They had just been here with a sarch warrant before you came. The Lord ’spired me to put mother and child out on the roof, down agin the church. They sarched every hole and cranny – up stairs and down, under the beds, in old barrels, and up the chimnies, I followin’ round, and tryin’ to look as if I wern’t afeard of nothin’. But, la sus! Miss Grace, I’ve lived too long in our family to be handy at lyin’ any way. I was all of a nerve and a tremble. At last, says the tall one to the little snub, ‘John,’ says he, ‘we may as well gubs it up this time;’ and as soon as I was redy of ’em, I called in Vi’let and Prince. Poor gal! her heart is a breakin’ all the while, for she knows it’s only a lull, and she and Prince have got to quit ’Gus, and go back to slavery. Ah, Miss Grace, that’s a boy! that Prince – there’s nothin he don’t know – he can play a tune on the Jew’s harp, and sing, ‘Saints are rejoicin’, Sinners are a tremblin’ from first to last. Oh, I had rather give my eyes, and my right arm too, than to lose him – but I’ve got to – I’ve got to!” Here the poor creature was choked with sobs, but her indignation overpowering her grief, “My curse,” she said, clenching her hands, and raising them, “my curse, as long as I can speak it, shall follow them folks down to Washington that made the arm of the law long enough and strong enough to wrench away our own children, do what we will!”

“Oh, Di’!” said Grace, “dear old Di’, they shall not take your children from you; Violet shall come home with me, I will conceal her till I find some way of saving her. I will sell my last gown rather than let her go from you.”

“Ah, but, Miss Grace, they’ll ask too dear; they ’ve got no bowels, and so they think nobody else has got ’em.”

“Never fear, Di’ – ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ you know. But how shall we get her to Bond Street?” And turning to ask Copley’s advice, she saw he was standing with his back to her at the end of the room, absorbed apparently in contemplating a small picture of herself which he had taken from the wall to get a stronger light upon it.

“Oh, come here, Mr Copley,” she said with a slight tone of impatience, “have you not heard poor Di’s story?”

“Most assuredly, every word of it.”

“Then can’t you advise, or devise for us?”

“No,” he replied, his tone now indicating a cordial interest that enchanted Grace; “but I will execute whatever your quicker wits devise.”

Grace snapped her fingers, an apt action with her, denoting the rapid movement of her brain. “I have it,” she exclaimed. “Diana, is not Violet about my height and size?”

“Close on’t, Miss Grace, close on’t – the same pretty fall of the shoulders, too, and kind o’ proud set of the head.”

“Very well – it will be dark in half an hour. Violet shall dress herself in my gown, bonnet, shawl, scarf, and veil, and go in my place, arm in arm with Mr Copley, to Bond Street. If these men are still lurking about here, they will be deceived. Will you play your part, Mr Copley?”

“With most entire satisfaction, provided Mistress Violet’s arm is a hostage for yours.”

Grace, in her eagerness to carry her plan into effect did not apprehend the full import of his words. She gave him her hand in playful ratification of their compact, and at that moment Copley did not much err in inferring from the animation of her face, that she would not shrink from the strict construction that his most sanguine hope gave to the action. “Not a word from you, Dian!” said Grace, “are you not satisfied?”

“La, ma’am, yes,” answered poor Di, looking desperately bedroofed, “but you’ve forgot Prince; they’ll hold Vi’let by her heartstrings if they get Prince.”

Grace’s countenance fell. “I did forget little Prince,” she said.

“Leave Prince to me,” said Copley; “I give you my word he shall be cared for.”

Diana was content. The colored people have a feudal dependence on the word of “a real gentleman,” in their acceptation of the term. She went to summon her daughter-in-law, who presently came, a graceful, young mulatto woman. Her beauty, alas! as well as her youth and strength, had its money value. Her boy was clinging to her gown, as Ishmael does to Hagar’s in Da Vinci’s picture. His fine head and face were nature’s protest against the state to which he was doomed. At first Violet seemed dissatisfied with an arrangement that separated her from him, but when Diana had reiterated Copley’s assurance, and whispered something of which Grace heard the words “rich” and “her suitor,” she seemed partly reassured, and went up stairs with Grace to prepare for her masquerading.

In the mean time old Dian’s heart expanded as did the Genii, when the box was opened, he in smoke, she in words.

“La, sus! I wonder what ’Gus will say when he hears it all. He’s gone to Hartford with the brass band. You know, Mr Copley, ’Gus beats all on the tamborine – there’s nothing he loves so well, ’cept Vi’let and Prince. Why, Mr Copley, if our hearts is down in our shoes, he’ll come in and take down his tamborine and rise ’em right up. No wonder ’Gus sets by Vi’let – she’s been raised like a lady. Are you ’quainted with the Guthries down in Caroliny, Mr Copley?”

“I have heard of them.”

“I s’pose so. They’re one of the first families, and by Vi’let’s tell, quality to the back bone. Vi’let was three years older than Miss Angelica Guthrie. She was set off to wait on her – that’s the way down there. They grew up together inch by inch, and Vi’let says their hearts twined together just like roots of a potted plant. She says Miss Angelica was like her name – angel was the biggest part of her; she was a feeble little piece; and sights o’ watching and tending Vi’let had to do, but she loved her misses all the better for that, you know; and when Miss Angelica married Massa Tom Crampton, Vi’let went with her in course. But as handsome as Massa Tom ’peared, Vi’let did not quite trust him – ’case, you see, he was a gay blood, and somehow sarvents find out the real in their massas afore the quality does. However, things went pretty straight for a year. They went down to Charlestown and had a pretty gay winter, but when they came back to the plantation, Vi’let says, Miss Angelica gets feeble, and Massa Tom gets tired – men can’t help it, you know; ’tis kinder tiresome when the missesses gets sickly – and he goes off to the races. She had no children, and Massa Tom took to gambling, and carrying on, and so forth. Vi’let says they mostly do – the young youth, ’case they have not got nothing else to do. Vi’let says she knows many good old parents that go down to the grave. I don’t argify with Vi’let, but says I to myself, they need not – why don’t they give their slaves free, and make their boys work, and then they would crown their hoary heads; as the Bible says, ‘Buy t’other world with this, and so win both’ – that’s it, Massa Copley. But Vi’let’s always speaking up for ’em, ’specially the missesses. She says they are so kind, and gen’rous, and pious. Vi’let’s heart is as tender as a spring chicken. She says they feel the curse of slavery more than the slaves do, and more than the abolitioners do; and some day they’ll shake it off, for Vi’let says the day is a comin’ when they can’t stand it no longer, for their lands are a runnin’ down, and their children are a runnin’ down, and their consciences are a gnawin’, and their hearts are a risin’; but says I to Vi’let, ‘Why don’t they make a beginnin’? I want you to ’splain that!’”

“Are there shad in the market yet?” asked Copley.

The old woman started at this sudden obstruction to her flow of earnest feeling. After recovering herself, she replied, “I think there be, sir; but my young misses is prudent, and never buys ’em at the dearest.”

Poor Dian left the room crestfallen. As she mounted the stairs to look after Violet’s toilet, she muttered, “S’pose I did run on like a house a’fire, he need not throw cold water in my face! He’s a terrible fine gentleman, but he an’t good enough for our folks arter all.”

Grace reappeared with her protegée. Copley surveyed the young mulatto. “There is an endowment of grace and refinement in your very shawl and hat, Miss Herbert!” he said.

“Oh, no,” replied Grace, “she is to that manner native. Now take her under your ward and watch, and don’t forget to send a carriage at eight.”

“Forget!” he exclaimed, and then turning back from the door, as if at a second thought, he added, “Unfortunately I have a business engagement, and can not come with the carriage.” The “business engagement” was an appointment to look over, with Mrs Tallis, some Paris costumes for a fancy ball.

Grace saw by the lighted street lamp that the men in wait did not follow, and she rightly inferred that they were satisfied that the parties who went out were the same who entered a half-hour before.

“Well, my dear child, what do you propose to do next?” asked Mr Herbert, to whom Grace was confiding Violet’s story. “Mrs Herbert will find excellent reasons why you should not make her house a house of refuge.”

“My dear uncle I shall beware of encroaching on Mrs Herbert. She always takes the prudent side, and there are plenty of ready-made reasons in the world’s economy for that. I only hesitate to tell you what I have resolved to do – because, Uncle Walter, you are so very saving of my money; but you know ‘there is a time to spend as well as a time to save,’ and surely the ‘time to spend’ will never come to me with a more affecting appeal than at this moment.”

“But, my dear child!”

“Hear me out, uncle. I can, in no way, but by paying their price, shield this poor mother and her boy from the law that forces them back to slavery. I am glad, at any cost, to bear my testimony against it.”

“But Grace, consider, my child – you can not afford to bear your testimony in this way. You have but just enough for your own wants; remember you are always a little in advance of your income. They may demand $1,500 for the mother and child; Violet is a handsome creature, and beauty, you know, enhances the price of this kind of goods.”

Her uncle’s suggestion filled Grace’s eyes with tears, and made her cheeks glow. “Oh, my country! my country!” she exclaimed, “how long are you to suffer this shame?” Grace’s mind was imbued with an heroic love of country, a sentiment not common in these days of small and importunate egotisms. “Don’t let us talk any more about it, Uncle Walter,” she resumed; “I must have my way this time. Eleanor is teaching me that there is more than one mode of securing independence.”

“Do as you will, my child – do as you will. I verily believe you might persuade me to throw all the little money we both have into the dock, and go round the streets with you grinding a hand organ. You and Eleanor will never catch the epidemic of the country – Thank God!” he added, devoutly.

It was further on in the same evening when Miss Anne Carlton’s maid was divesting her mistress of a dress (which her mother averred had been ‘admired beyond everything,’ at a small party where that lady had been the star of the evening) that mother and daughter were discussing Grace’s sequestration of Violet. “Really, mamma,” said Miss Anne Carlton, “Grace imposes on you. I can not think what right she has to make our house a hiding place for runaway slaves!” She caught the reflection of her handsome face in the glass, and interjected a sentence, seemingly foreign to the preceding, and in a quite different tone: “Do you know, mamma, that Sabina Reeve says she has not the smallest idea Copley means anything by his devotion to Grace; she says it is a way he has of amusing himself.”

“Time will show,” replied the non-committal mother.

“But, about that slave girl, mamma. Does Grace expect you to submit to the police searching our house for stolen goods? How perfectly horrid!”

“Grace is trying!” said the mother. “But you know, Anne, I wish to avoid any difference with her, and I think I have managed pretty well so far – thanks to my knowledge of human nature.” One could not help wondering whether Mrs Herbert was conscious of partaking this human nature, which she deemed so plastic in her hands! “I do particularly wish,” she continued, “to avoid involving myself in this inconvenient subject of slavery. No one disapproves of slavery in the abstract more than I do. I fear it is wrong; and I know enough of political economy to know that it is the most expensive mode of labor.”

“Oh, mamma, do let political economy alone tonight.”

“My dear! you are getting as nervous as Walter Herbert. He cut me short, just as I was beginning to give him my views. You may rest assured, Anne, that I do not approve of any interference with the laws. Women’s duty is clear on that point. I am, therefore, not pleased with Grace’s proceeding, and above all, with her bringing the runaway here. But you know I stand on delicate ground. Her father, by his will, gave her an absolute right to the apartments she occupies.”

“Yes, and Mr Herbert to his, and absurd it was!”

“Dear Anne, do not speak disrespectfully of your mother’s husband; few wills are made without some errors of judgment. But, to the point: so long as Miss Herbert keeps the girl in her own apartment, I shall not interfere. If the house is to be searched, I shall submit – with a protest.”

“And so you would submit, if Grace Herbert turned us both out of doors. Some people always rule, and others always give up!” and the young lady, having concluded with this meek aphorism, retired with the conviction that she and her mother were among the downtrodden.

The next morning every ring at Mrs Herbert’s door seemed to each member of her family to announce the dread visit of the officers of justice. They did not come, but at 12 o’clock there did come a pacquet, addressed to “Miss Herbert,” in Copley’s hand. It contained “free papers” for Violet and her boy, with a receipt to Mr Copley for $1400, from the agent of Violet’s owner. Copley’s star was in the ascendant. He had stamped on Grace’s feelings, at the moment of their softening, his own image, beaming with sympathy, generosity and benevolence.

The unusually happy frame of Grace’s mind was somewhat impaired by the receipt of the following curt answer to the note to her brother-in-law, in which she had communicated what she termed, “Mr Copley’s timely and kind intervention in his behalf:”

My Dear Sister:

Accept my thanks for an offer, which of course I owe directly or indirectly to you. The appointment proposed neither comports with my sense of duty, my qualifications, or my inclinations.

Yours affectionately,

F. Esterly

P. S. Of course, you will make suitable acknowledgments to H.C.

“Very gracious! my dear brother-in-law,” thought Grace, as she refolded the letter, feeling an implication with her lover as an injured party, when she perceived that Eleanor had filled the inner pages of the sheet. “Ah, sweet sister,” thought she, “you will make all smooth – you were made to pick the thorns out of life.”

Don’t set it down against Frank, dear sister,” said the letter, “that his answer is a little crusty. You know how these bilious attacks of his turn all sweet juices to acid for the time. The harassing trials attending his resignation, followed too close upon our boy’s death, and quite knocked him up. It seems to me that the afflictions God appoints are sanctifying, while those of men’s infliction stir up the evil in our nature. Frank has suffered terribly from the uncharitable denunciations of some of his brethren. It is through their intervention that he has failed of his election to the presidency of — College. I rather rejoice in this failure, as giving my husband the opportunity for entire rest. Teach he will, for to this service he holds himself pledged by his clerical vow.

I am sure that his perplexities will excuse to you, my dear sister, his discourtesy to Mr Copley. Pray make the best of it to him. Give him my grateful acknowledgments; and, dear Grace, do let your friend know how much I felt his kindness to little Herbert. Apologize for my not writing a note to him. I have been so absorbed in nursing and cheering my husband, that I have neglected minor duties.

Dear sister, I did not know, till trial and, in some sort, disappointment, came, the full blessedness of the marriage tie. Not in the days of ‘young love,’ not in our hours of ease, but now, when the strain of life has come, do we realize the worth of our bonds; storms and adverse winds prove the ship. May your marriage, dear sister, whenever it comes, be as happy as ours!” Grace paused, read over the last paragraph, smiled – sighed – and then finished the letter. “Pray, Grace, look in upon Cousin Effie, and see that she does not over-fatigue herself with little Nel. Tell dear old Di’ we hope to be at home next week. My dearest love to Uncle Walter, and kind remembrance to Mrs Herbert; and please tell Anne, that if I go to B. I will execute her commission with pleasure.

E. E.

“Oh, dear, perfect sister!” exclaimed Grace, “your heart compasses sea and land – even takes in Anne Carlton! Well, there can be but one normal character in a family – and but one normal marriage!”

Chapter 22

“…beyond reach

His children can not wander

Of the sweep of his white raiment.’

On the banks of the Hudson river, on one of the old roads not yet absorbed into a broad and numbered avenue, was a farm-house on a property called “Blossom Farm.” The house stood under a bluff overlooking the river and the Palisades. It was completely screened, winter and summer, by tall old pines. The road that ran between it and the river, scarcely more than a bridle path, was particularly attractive for horsemen who liked lonely and romantic rides. There, in a well aired apartment of the house, bolstered by piles of pillows, lay a young woman in the last stage of consumption, as her emaciated frame, her hectic cheek, her glowing eye, her moist temples and her whistling breath too surely indicated. Her fair long tresses were turned off her face and lay over the pillow with that lifeless languor which marks even the hair in this disease. Her small transparent hands were tightly clasped, betraying the effort to which her spirit was strained. Her faithful little spaniel lay at her feet, looking up wistfully, moving at her slightest movement, and wagging his tail at every sound of her husky feeble voice – that voice lately so sweet and clear. Miss Travers stood behind her, dropping heavy tears on her pillow, and bathing her temples, while a middle-aged woman knelt beside her, her whole frame quivering with emotion, and her face crimsoned and convulsed with grief. “Why, in the world, my poor child,’ she said (it was Jessie’s mother), “did you not tell his mother? Did the villain buy your silence?’

“No, mother. But when I felt what it was to be miserable – oh, most miserable – I could not bear to make another so – he was her only child.’

“And you – you were mine! Oh God, rain down curses on him!’

“Oh, mother, don’t say that. You promised to be still and hear me. I can not speak if you say such words – don’t, mother dear.’

“I will try not, my darling,’ said the poor woman eagerly, and she pressed her hand firmly over her mouth.

“He sent me to the city,’ resumed Jessie, “to a decent-looking place; he gave me plenty of money, and every way provided for me. Oh, how I lived on his promise to come and see me – he never came – I thank God now, but then I did not feel so. I saw only a woman and a servant that tended on me. I soon found out they were the worst of people.’

“Oh, my innocent child!’

“Hush, dear mother. I wrote again to you – was it that letter you got?’

“It was, thank God.’

“I can’t remember how many weeks I was there, it seemed forever. I had cried till I had no more tears left; but I sobbed, and sobbed night and day, I had got so into the way of it. One horrid night the house seemed full; there was rioting, and drunkenness, and thundering knocks at my locked door. I was in such terror. The next day I stole away, and went to Miss Martha Young’s. She was dead. Oh, when I found it so, I was so sick and faint. But, mother, God did not forsake me. A kind Irish woman took me into her own little room, and got such plenty of work for me, that I earned more than I spent. I made my baby things; they were so pretty!’ A smile gleamed over Jessie’s face at this one pleasant memory. “I loved to look at them; I could not help it – I hope it was not wrong; I knew I was disgraced, but I did not feel wicked, mother. It seemed to me that my Father in heaven looked down on me in pity, not in anger. I had burned up the banknotes Mr Copley gave me. I had cast away all the fine things he decked me with. I had tried to do all the right I could, and I was patient and somehow at peace. It was last May my baby was born – the baby that I had so longed to hold in my arms! to feel its breath on my cheek, and its little lips on mine, but, oh mother, it was dead – it was dead! I never saw it!’ The poor girl’s voice here sank away and a shiver passed over her, but after an interval of ten minutes, and taking some restoratives, she was able again to speak. “It was better so, I suppose; I had on right to the sweet feelings of a mother. I was very, very ill, and that good soul stayed from her day’s work to nurse me. A cough came on, and I went down, down, down, month after month, worse and worse. About a month ago, it may be two, my mind began to wander, and one night, I think, I got up in my sleep – I don’t know – it was all confused –’ She rose in the bed, and rested on her elbow, and seemed piercing into the intricate obscurities of her memory, but it was in vain; she shook her head and sank back. “It seemed to me I met him – I can not say if I did. I can not separate what was real from what was a dream. My mind was so bewildered – could it have been a dream? I remember it all so well. The streets were still and empty, and I walked on and on – I was so tired. I looked up to the stars, and they looked cold and far away, and I tried to pray, and God seemed far away too. Then I heard footsteps – I stood under a lamp. Mr Copley came close to me – he was walking with a tall lady. It could not have been a dream, and yet when I laid my hand on him, and stopped him, and spoke to him, he seemed not to know me – just as people do seem in a dream – and he shook me off, and I fell on the pavement, and then I don’t remember any more till I waked in the hospital on Blackwell’s Island. You know, dear Miss Travers, what that place is? It’s the place, mother, where they send wretched women from wretched places. I was mistaken for one of them! Oh, dear! dear! dear!’

“You, Jessie, my child! and you ask me not to curse him?’

“You must not, mother. I am just gone, and I want to hear blessing and not cursing. Mother, say that blessed prayer with me I used to say at home, when I knelt down before you. I have prayed it many a time when it seemed to fold me round like wings and lift me above my sin and my sorrows. Pray it with me, dear mother, and you won’t feel like cursing.’

Mother and child repeated together that divine petition, whose few words expand to every want of humanity. The mother’s voice was soft and steady. Jessie’s such as one might imagine a spirit’s to be, hovering at the opening gate of immortality. When it was finished, she drew her mother down to her bosom, gave her a long protracted kiss, and murmured, so low that Miss Travers bent her head to the pillow to hear her, “Now all my trouble is over, mother. God has forgiven us both. We shall meet in heaven.’ She gasped for breath. Miss Travers gave her a cordial, and wiped away the cold dews on her forehead. After a little while her breath was less obstructed; nature roused its last energies, and she proceeded: “You want to know all, mother; there’s not much more to tell. I was three weeks in the hospital. Oh, what racking pains of body, and pangs of conscience, and far worse, what hardened wickedness I saw there! For the most part they were victims of vanity and love of dress. I thought good women should gather up friendless children, and teach weak ignorant girls what snares fine clothes and flattery may be to them. But God’s witnesses were there too – a good doctor, and a kind matron; and there came there every week, a woman – one of God’s messengers she surely was – she looks after all forsaken and forgotten ones – love and hope shone in her face. The sun broke on my black night when she took my hand and kissed me, and told me to be of good cheer. She it was that brought me to this quiet place, and brought Miss Travers to me.’

All that we have here written down in continuous sentences, was broken into fragments by faintness, gasping, and sometimes utter loss of breath. Now her eye was becoming glazed, and her utterance so painful that Miss Travers said, “Don’t try to speak any more, dear child, it is too hard.’

“Only one word more – mother, say you forgive him.’

“I do – I do forgive him – God forgive us all!’

A heavenly smile lighted Jessie’s face.

“Just like the first smile I ever saw on my baby’s lips!’ exclaimed the mother.

“Thanks,’ whispered Jessie, her feeble hand groping for Miss Travers; “poor little Beau, goodbye – kiss me, mother – how dark it’s getting! Good night – good night!’

The low whisper ceased, the breathing became fainter and fainter. In one hour more Jessie’s heart ceased to beat.

Miss Travers sank on her knees in silent prayer. The mother seemed totally changed. God had spoken to the waves of resistance and resentment, “Peace – be still!’ and they were still. She sat down on the bedside, and calmly putting aside the pillows, laid Jessie’s head on her bosom, and folded her arms around her, saying in a subdued tone, “My own little girl in my arms again!’

Here, in the deep shadows of obscurity, lay this victim of a man of the world, degraded – not corrupted – a beautiful flower ruthlessly crushed, God’s gracious gifts thrown away, and the good purposes of his providence contravened. Here, her life taken away, her pure name blighted, never to be spoken, but with scorn or sighs; here she lay – dead – on the bosom of a broken-hearted mother!

Where was he who was to answer for her fate? Lapped in luxury – seeking a fresh pleasure for every passing hour – received among “respectable men,’ who knew his course of life, as if untainted, and – God help us! – by mothers as a fit associate, a coveted husband for their daughters, for he belonged to the “best society,” he was “high bred,” and “very elegant,” and “so fascinating” – we quote, not invent the current phrases – and “he had thirty thousand a year!’ This is the stale old world complaisance repeated here. Pass the threshold to another life – “A ministering angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling.”

Horace Copley to Sam Belson.

Dear Sam,

I have been passing the evening alone with my mother. I do that dutiful act now and then. My mother is regularly pious, straight-laced, but she discreetly avoids meddling with my affairs. I fancied she had her suspicions after Jessie’s sudden demise, but she said nothing – wise in her generation is my mother. ‘Apropos des bottes,’ I met that girl Jessie in the street not long ago – she is shockingly changed – gone like the rest of them. She stopped me, and spoke to me, and who of all the world do you think was with me! – G.H. By Jupiter, Sam, I thought my game was up – but bless these fine young ladies! – bless their voluntary and involuntary blindness! To return to my tête-à-tête with my mother. After a preliminary fidgeting she began: ‘I have long wished, my son, to speak to you on an interesting subject. The town, you know, Horace, is giving you to Miss Herbert.’ I bowed and looked, I’ll answer for it, as blank as white paper. ‘I have no objection to make,’ she continued (that is, revered mother, you will not oppose a will you can’t control) ‘I must confess I should have preferred another selection. Your dear father in his lifetime tried hard to purchase the beautiful Carlton property next ours, and when I think of what I know to have been his wish, of course it seems to me a pity that you do not prefer Miss Anne Carlton, who is quite as handsome and as superior as Miss Herbert, and more – (I wondered what my mother stumbled at), and more – docile – more like to make a pliant wife. But of course it is for you to decide – it is nothing to me in a worldly point of view.’ – Humbug, Sam, she would give her right hand to see me married to Anne – and her ‘beautiful property.’ ‘It is a trial,’ she continued, ‘when an only son comes to marry; daughters-in-law are not daughters, but mothers are always mothers.’ She wiped her eyes, perhaps tears from them, for it is a tremendous struggle to ungrapple her hopes from the Carlton estate. I assured my venerable parent that I felt deeply grateful for her generosity, but I only nibbled at the bait; – it is too soon to pour my confidence into the maternal bosom. The balances are still quivering. They shall not turn against me. I know, Sam, you think me a fool for this dogged pursuit, when, as you say, there are scores of pretty women – Anne Carltons – that I might marry for the asking, or, better still, have without the cost, and risks, and tedium of marriage; or, I may enjoy the swing of youth, you tell me, and at forty, fifty, or sixty buy a pretty young wife. Wives have their price in our pure young republic, and if not quite as cheap as in a Turkish market, they are as surely to be bought. But, my boy, I can not give up the chase now. Like other men, perhaps I ‘prize the thing ungained more than it is.’ Six years since I made a bet with you and recorded it, that I would marry Grace Herbert. When I was a boy, if I set my wishes on a particular apple, on a particular tree, I would break my neck but I got it. My temper is not yet changed!

She cares not a fig for my fortune, or my position – this gratifies my pride; for, if she marries me, it will be for what I am, or what she fancies I am. Laugh at my vanity, if you will, I have it in common with the world; it is the universal motive-passion; it impels the florist to produce the prize rose, and leads the martyr to the stake; we are all on one level there.

I have made lucky hits of late. The Esterlys have lost one of their progeny, and while they were in the ferment of hopes and fears, I rained down toys and flowers upon them. Trifles light as air tell, when the heart is soft. I wrote a masterly note, and sent it, with a bouquet, to solace Miss H. when she came home from her nephew’s funeral. It was noncommittal, and yet significant enough. I could turn Augusta Tallis’ head off her shoulders, with half the pains I took to compose that note.

But my masterstroke, my coup-de-grace, was this very morning. There has been a hue and cry after a mulatto runaway slave, a devilish fine creature, connected with an old family servant of the Esterlys. Miss H., as one might predicate of her, partakes the furor for fugitive slaves in general, and for this one she had a particular interest. I seized the occasion, and ransomed the woman and her boy, paying to the tune of $1,400!!

I see but one breaker ahead – that cousin of mine, Julia Travers, saint and vestal; would she were trimming her own fires, instead of watching mine! Setting aside feminine decency, she had the boldness, not long ago, to speak to me of that little fille-de-joie, Jessie, who has turned up somewhere in Miss Julia’s harvest field, and ‘della qualle é bella il tacere,’ and so I told my cousin in pretty plain English, and we parted – daggers drawn.

Rolla is at the door, I am going out for a gallop – au revoir –’

11 P.M. – I think it was the devil, or a spell like that which is said to bring a murderer back to the precise scene of his crime, that made me turn Rolla’s head out of the avenue into an obscure road, which you may remember, where, on turning an angle by a copse of pines, you come upon an old farmhouse. As I came round the corner, Rolla was in full headway. I saw a hearse standing before the farmhouse door, and two or three officials about it. I think from a premonitory impulse to escape the place, I must have given a sudden jerk to Rolla’s bit; he never before served me such a knave’s trick – he stumbled, and threw me over his head; mine struck the ground. I was stunned, and taken into the farmhouse unconscious. When I came to my senses, I was stretched on a sofa, and my cousin Julia was bathing my temples. My perceptions were dim, but I think there was another person beside my cousin in the room, for I have an impression of a ghostly pale face, and a long mourning veil floating through a door into a back-parlor, and of my cousin leaving my side to close the door. She gave me a glass of wine – her hand shook; so, I think, did mine. After a while she said, ‘Your color is returning – are you better?’

‘Yes, quite well.’

‘Your horse is at the door; are you able to remount him?’

Her voice was steady, and her manner not unkind. I can not tell why I was irritated. Are there unseen demons that beset us? I felt as if I were in a place of torment, and she there to scourge me. I replied, ‘Yes, perfectly able,’ and threw from me a handkerchief steeped in some infernal stuff which she had laid on my forehead. As I rose to my feet – the room turned dark; I reeled, and caught by the first thing I could reach. The confusion passed like a driving cloud, and directly, with the full power and acuteness of my senses, I perceived that my hand had seized the open lid of a coffin, and under my eye was the face of that girl – Jessie. Good God! Her image, as she was a little more than a year ago, rose before me; the bloom and roundness; the rich and shining tresses that her little childish fingers played with, as in her confusion she parried my lovemaking; those bright dewy lips, now blue – blue, and cold – bah! they haunt me. I was weakened by my fall, and this shocking sight smote me: my nerves were shaken – my blood curdled at my heart. I should have been prepared for this sorry sight by the looks of the girl when I met her in the street, but I was not; I was unmanned. I paced up and down the room, and again I stood over the dead girl. Just at that moment the door opened, and in sprang another acquaintance of mine, Jessie’s only friend, a little spaniel that had come with her from her English home; she called him Beau. I had fed and petted him; he flew up to me, fawned on me, and licked my hands. Sam, I confess it, I felt at the moment as if it would be sacrilege to touch him. He turned from me, and leaped to the coffin, and lay there as still as the clod within it. I was weak as a child. I wrung my hands – I cried like a boy! I saw a tear in the hollow of Jessie’s cheek; I started, and looked to my cousin. ‘Her mother dropped it there,’ she said.

‘Her mother! Has she a mother?’ I asked.

‘Yes, a broken-hearted mother. Oh, Horace! who can say where a great wrong shall stop? Dear little Jessie’s sorrows are ended. She forgave all, and I doubt not is forgiven. Do not let her dying prayer for you be lost! There is mercy for the sinner; though his sins be as scarlet, they shall become white as wool.’ She went on multiplying trite quotations. Her exhortation was a thought too long; it brought me back to the old track. Had she left me to the scourging of that horrid sight – to the rebuke of that fond little animal, I might have passed by remorse to penitence, and perchance come out upon the highway of reformation, but I was not to be bridled and ridden by a canting girl, so I broke away, mounted Rolla, and came home. I swallowed a glass of brandy, and went to the opera, but I heard nothing but the ringing in my ears, saw nothing, but that coffin, and the wreck within it. I rushed into the street, and found myself before Miss Herbert’s door. Miss Herbert heard me as I entered, and came into the hall to thank me for my part in the fugitive slave affair. She sent a flood of healing from her starry eyes into my soul. When we came into the drawing room, her stepmother – old women are always asking about one’s health – remarked my paleness, and inquired if I were ill, and followed up her inquiry with an exclamation at a patch on my forehead which I believed my hair covered. I stammered, and finally confessed that my horse had thrown me.

‘Your horse stumbled!’ exclaimed old Herbert, who never lets an opportunity pass of annoying me; ‘I think I heard you boast that a horse well broken like yours never stumbled.’

‘Rolla bowed to destiny, Uncle Walter,’ said Grace; ‘pride must have its fall! But I hope you are not much hurt,’ she added, turning on me a look full of earnest interest. Uncle Walter, Rolla, may go to the devil – that look pays all. Lisle was there. That old loafer, Walter Herbert, affects him greatly. I meet him hobbling along at the young man’s side every day. I believe in my soul, the old fool would rather give his niece to him than to me! I am not jealous of him, Sam, but we are antagonistic. He looks at me with a cold contempt that irritates me.

Good night – the clock strikes two – I am tired, out and out, but there is no sleep in me – phantoms haunt me. Twice I have rushed into the street, and walked round the square. I can not get beyond that coffin! that dead girl! I am not worse than other men, nor old, nor sick – why should these phantoms pursue me? Good night.

H.C.

The good man meditates and prays in the silent watches of the night, and “the peace that passeth understanding’ takes possession of him. But to all, save the good, what are these “silent watches,’ when nature with its thousand assuaging voices is stilled, when the clamors of the world are hushed, the flatteries of friends are forgotten, the officiousness of incessant vanity is subdued, and even the soothing whisperings of self-love have died away? Crimes, sorrows, levities – that which ‘has been done that ought not to have been done,’ and ‘that which has been left undone’ – haunt the memory. The soul is alone in the sunlight of truth, before the tribunal of conscience! before God!

The veriest wretch of our city, unfed, unhoused, needed not to envy Horace Copley, the rich, the exquisite, the ‘fascinating’ Horace Copley, during the silent watches of that night.

No besieging general ever more anxiously calculated the chances of success, and provided against intervening and opposing forces, than did Copley. The nearer he approached the hour of victory, the more eager and vigilant he became.

He had now to manage his cousin Julia, and to that end he elaborately penned the following epistle:

My Dear Cousin Julia:

After the melodramatic scene which we shared yesterday, I feel bound to make an appeal to you, not wholly to justify myself, but to state some extenuating circumstances. This is not a fitting subject to discuss with a young lady, but it is thrust upon me, and you must pardon me. A recurrence to the circumstances of my early life will perhaps distill from your kind heart some drops of pity for me. Remember, that I was left at nineteen, when the appetites are keenest, and the love of pleasure uncontrollable, heir of a large fortune, and master of myself. My father, it is too well known, had not been over-strict in his life. With his example, I inherited his constitution. Pardon me, Julia; you are a sensible woman, and will allow their due weight to the grounds of my defence. At nineteen, then, I began my career; I had intimates older than myself, who were deep in the world. I plunged in with them, and I have no great satisfaction in the retrospect of the two years that followed.

At that period, viz., when I was twenty-one, ‘a change came o’er the spirit of my dream’ – the love of my childhood for Grace Herbert revived, with all the force of manhood, and from that hour, with more or less hope, I have loved and followed her. From that period I have been getting rid of my old companions, and habits, and, on my soul, they have now no charm for me, or influence over me.

‘And yet,’ you will say, ‘this poor girl’s tragedy has been enacted within the last year!’ True, my dear cousin, true! But I could not turn anchorite at once. Miss Herbert had been unusually cold to me; and disheartened, I shut myself up at Elm Grove. My mother brought this pretty young person there, and imprudently left us alone together. I can not enter into details to you; but, for heaven’s sake, dear Julia, let bygones be bygones. Your imagination is naturally excited by the illness and death of this young person – God knows, no fault of mine – but look at the facts I have stated reasonably. I did all in my power to atone for my fault; I sent the girl to the care of a person in whom I had implicit confidence, and, as perhaps she told you, provided ample means for every exigency.

But, my dear cousin, as it is impossible we should view this subject quite in the same light, let me turn to another, on which we must have one judgment. I have but one chance for happiness, perhaps for virtue, for I am not stronger than other men, and disappointment might throw me back into the whirlpool which I have escaped by the force of a pure and constant passion. You know, by your own experience, the omnipotence of such a love. You will not assume the responsibility of depriving me of its motives and security? The future opens two paths to me – one of married love and honorable aspiration, the other, the ‘facilis descensus;’ which I shall take, depends on you.

You love my mother? Her heart is garnered up in my unworthy self. With me alone rests the transmission of the husband’s name whom she loved and honored, despite his faults – who, among poor mortals, has not faults? You would compass sea and land to save my life for my mother’s sake; will you not do something to preserve that which is far dearer to her, the honor of my life?

I know you have a stern, permit me to say, a fanatical sense of duty, which might impel you to disclose this story of the poor girl, with your partly false impressions of it, to Miss Herbert. If you do, it is easy to foresee the effect upon her wounded pride, may I not add, her wounded affection? Dare you take this responsibility? I ask this question solemnly, my dear cousin, not in a spirit of defiance. Julia, when you kneel at the marriage altar, will it not be a bitter thought to you, that you have fenced me from it forever? for as true as there is a heaven above, I never again can entertain an honorable love.

You may imagine what is the force of feeling that overcomes my habitual reserve, and leads me to throw my open heart, quivering, at your feet – do not crush the life out of it.

May the God you so faithfully serve direct you!

Yours devotedly,

H.C.

Miss Travers, with a deep conviction of her cousin’s baseness, and a clear perception of her duty to her friend, had her hat and cloak on, with the purpose of going to Miss Herbert to make a full disclosure, when this letter was brought in. She read it through, at first simply with indignation at its false views and false assumptions. She read it a second time, and felt there was some truth, mingled with its subtle sophisms; a third time, and she shrunk from leveling a blow that must strike down her aunt; a fourth, and, throwing off her hat and cloak, she exclaimed aloud, “No, I dare not take this responsibility; perhaps it is by marrying my cousin that poor Grace is to work out his salvation and her own!’

How few there are that comprehend the responsibility of declining a responsibility!

Copley received a short, cold note from his cousin, promising secrecy, and unfolding the letter he had written to Belson, he added this postscript:

I have Julia’s promise of secrecy, and the devil himself can’t tempt her to break it! The game is won! Dear, sweet cousin Julia! you are just as consistent as the rest of the world – saints and sinners!

Note

If this sad story serve to expose a prevailing sin, let it have the full weight due to an “o’er true tale.’ Its leading facts are true. Some of the most touching expressions were taken down from the lips of a dying girl, one of the many who are every year in our Christian city corrupted in their youth, and turned aside from the benign purposes of Providence, their fair field of life choked with poisonous weeds, and untimely driven to that bar, where, if mercy is meted to them, justice will be dealt to their destroyers.

Chapter 23

“Ye ken when folks are paired, Birdie;

Ye ken when folks are paired;

Life’s fair an foul and freakish weather,

An light an lumbering loads thegither,

Maun a’ be shared.”

The Esterlys, returned to their home, are at breakfast in the sunny room where all the home breakfasts of their married life had been eaten. The beginning of each day has a flavor of youth. Each morning, as in Paradise, “heaven wakes with all his eyes;” and what happier scene do they fall upon than a family assembling in love, grateful for possible perils escaped, and speaking the “good morning” in tones of affection, hope, and courage? Of all the family rites, the breakfast is the cheerfulest to the sound in body and mind – to the unsound, its sweet uses are turned to bitterness.

Eleanor, owing to the pressure of family work, had tied the baby in a high chair at the table, and she, excited by the unwonted indulgence, was rattling teaspoons and napkin rings, and babbling her glee in a baby patois, only intelligible to baby lovers.

“Why, I declare, what a pretty noise she makes, the darling!” said Cousin Effie; “she’s telling a story, isn’t she, all about the napkin rings coming to see the teaspoons? but Bob sings the loudest, don’t he, baby?” Bob was the canary, whose cage was hung by the window, drawn down to admit the soft April air, and who, as is the nature of that genus, was excited by the social clatter to do his utmost at his noisy music.

“Eleanor,” said her husband, in a querulous tone, “I trust you will find some place to stow away that bird out of hearing, when we get to Harlem.”

“Why, papa!” exclaimed May, “Erby’s bird!”

The table was hushed, till good Cousin Effie said, in a healing voice, “Father forgot Erby.”

“Did you forget Erby?” whispered May, as if her father should vindicate himself from ever forgetting the missing boy.

But Esterly made no reply, unless the sudden direction of his moistened eye toward the canary might be one. In another moment the wretched bodily sensations triumphed, as they will in their hour of mastery, over affection, sentiment, everything that belongs to the spiritual nature. “What is this villainous taste in this bread, Eleanor? You really should attend to my bread,” he said.

“I am sorry you do not relish it, Frank,” replied his wife.

“Relish it! Why it’s a compound of acid and bitter. You that can eat Di’s buckwheats, may talk about relishing! What are you laughing at, May?”

“Why, papa, that’s the very same loaf you said was so good last evening, at tea.”

“No, May; that was Cristy’s bread.”

“No, papa; you are mistaken. Mamma came all the way back from Broadway, when she was going to Aunt Grace’s, to tell Di’ to put it aside for you.”

“That may be; but it’s not the same.”

“I think it is, sir; mamma marked it with a cross.” May turned over the loaf, and, pointing to the cross, looked up to her father with a smile that would have driven out a legion of devils, having any other name than dyspepsia.

Esterly made no answer, but putting aside his untasted tea, went off to his study.

“Poor Frank! he always was so from a child,” said Cousin Effie; “he is always out of sorts when he is not well. Dear,” to Eleanor, “don’t you think a little milk porridge, with just the least dash of limewater, would help his stomach?”

“No, thank you, Cousin Effie, he does not like messes.”

“Oh he hates them, Cousin Effie,” said May.

“Does he, dear? Men a’most always do – they are peculiar to nurse. But, may be he’ll take a glass of cammomile with soda. I have given it to him many a time when he was of May’s age.”

‘That possibly is partly the reason,’ thought Eleanor, “why his bread tastes bitter now;” but, thanking Cousin Effie, she declined the prescription, saying she feared Frank’s malady was now beyond a cammomile cure. The doorbell rang. “Go, my little waiter, and open the door,” said Eleanor to May; “Bridget is busy, and we must save old Di’ all the steps we can.” Eleanor, on reducing her expenditures, had dismissed her manservant.

“You save everybody but yourself, dear,” said Cousin Effie who, though accounted all through life “a dull little body,” had an instinct to perceive and feel a demonstration of humanity.

May, charmed with her new office, came bouncing in with a note. It was from Mrs Selby, the lady who had rented Eleanor’s house and furniture. She was to take possession on Friday. It was now Wednesday morning. The note ran thus:

My Dear Mrs Esterly

I came to town last evening, to be ready to take possession on Friday. I find it very uncomfortable at the Astor House with my children. If you can give me possession tomorrow, you will very much oblige me. As it is but one day in anticipation, and you move so little furniture, I imagine it can not much inconvenience you. Please return by bearer a favorable answer.

Yours with respect

S.S.

P.S. Mr Selby and I are going to the opera tomorrow evening, and being a mother, you will feel how much more I shall enjoy myself if I leave my children in my own house instead of in a hotel.

Eleanor smiled at a selfishness so common in a world where one’s own convenience is lead in one scale, and one’s neighbor’s a feather in the other.

“What are you smiling at, dear?” asked Cousin Effie; “something pleasant in your note?”

Eleanor told its purport – Cousin Effie caught but one idea from it “It would be awful,” she said, “if anything should happen to those dear little children – hotels are so apt to catch fire!”

Eleanor did not permit her amiability to degenerate into weakness, and she had taken her pen to write a laconic refusal, but at the suggestion of soft-hearted cousin Effie, she considered how she could put two days’ work into one, and while she hesitated, her husband opened the door and said, “Eleanor, can you possibly copy that article for me?”

“Oh yes, Frank; you know I asked you to let me do it.” The fate of Mrs Selby’s request was decided. Eleanor wrote a refusal, qualifying it with the offer of her spare room for the nurse and children.

“Now I should never have thought of that!” exclaimed Cousin Effie; “’tis a great help to have a superior mind.”

“A far greater to have a superior heart, Cousin Effie.”

Eleanor’s sweet look at Cousin Effie, as she said this, made it inevitable for the honest little woman to take the remark home, and she said with a blushing deprecation, “Well, I can feel, but I never know how to say or do anything.”

“Dear Cousin Effie, do you call it doing nothing to take my big baby off my hands till 12 o’clock?”

“Oh, that’s only what I love to do.”

“And can do so well, Cousin Effie, that we shall never again know how to live without you.”

“The dear little creater!” exclaimed Effie, as Eleanor went off to her task with alacrity, “who but she would ever think such a poor old body as I anything but a burden? What a wife for poor Frank! She takes all the stumbling stones and bramble bushes out of everybody’s path!”

“My mother?” asked May. While Cousin Effie was thinking how she should literalize her figurative language for May’s comprehension – not seeing how very short the descent was from her own level to the child’s – the door was opened, and Mr Walter Herbert appeared. May leaped into his arms, and Cousin Effie, begging to be excused, withdrew.

“Where is your mother, May?” asked Mr Herbert.

“Writing for my father, and she said she must not be called for anybody – but you are somebody, Uncle Walter, and I may call her for you.”

“No, no, May – I am nobody – and no one cares for me!”

“Uncle Walter, I am sure I do, and my Aunt Grace does.”

“Your Aunt Grace has other fish to fry.”

“Aunt Grace fry fish! How funny you are, Uncle Walter.”

Uncle Walter did not look “funny,” but pensive and abstracted. He was recoiling from dangers that now seemed to him close at hand. He had asked Grace to come to her sister’s with him. She declined, pleading an engagement. During his solitary walk he had met her with Copley. May, with the instinct of a loving child, felt, without knowing wherefore, that he needed to be comforted. She put up her bright lips and kissed him, caressed his cheek, and said, “Ah, now, Uncle Walter, come and live with us in our nice little house at Harlem; if you and Aunt Grace come it will be jolly! Oh, it’s such a pretty little house; not ugly old brick like this, but wood painted white; and not such big rooms as these, but the cunningest little rooms, just a little bigger than mamma’s dressing room. It’s so much pleasanter, Cousin Effie says, not to have rooms cluttered up with furniture and things that we children must not touch – only a few things that we must have, you know, Uncle Walter.”

“But my darling, people differ as to what they must have.”

“Let them; you and I know, Uncle Walter, and mamma has all those things – a sofa for you to take a nap on when you are tired, and chairs, and a little table to sew by, and a big table to eat on. And we shall have one room entirely empty, where you, and I, and Grace can play blindfold, and not hurt ourselves, and break things. And there’s a closet big enough for my baby house, and a nice sunny kitchen, where poor old Di’ won’t get her rheumatisms, mamma says; and oh, best of all! there’s a pear tree in our yard where we can hang up Bob’s cage; and ever – ever so much blue sky over us! Will you come with us, Uncle Walter?”

The child’s estimates of the necessaries of life were certainly very different from those of the world’s in general – but, except ye become as one of these, ye can not enter into that kingdom of heaven which is in a heart of love and simplicity.

Uncle Walter was responsive – May cheated him of his moodiness – and half an hour afterward Mrs Herbert and Miss Carlton found him on the floor building castles with the child, with her blocks, and laughing with her over their downfall.

“Good morning, May,” said Mrs Herbert.

“Good morning, ma’am – keep a building, Uncle Walter – mamma is very much engaged, ma’am, and so are Uncle Walter and I.”

“Hoity toity miss!” said Anne Carlton, “where did you learn your manners?”

“Pshaw, Anne!” said Mrs Herbert, “children must be children. I heard at the door, my dear, that your mamma was engaged, but we came in to see the baby, and to take you home to pass the day.”

“Is Aunt Grace at home?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll stay here, if you please, ma’am, and I’ll go and ask Cousin Effie to bring down baby.”

“Oh, Mr Herbert!” said Anne Carlton, as May ran off to the nursery, “how can you help spoil that child? She is the rudest little thing I ever saw.”

“Not rude, Miss Anne; you know the old adage – ‘children and fools will speak the truth.’”

“I know they will if they are not taught better,” said Miss Anne.

Uncle Walter whistled. Now that whistle of Walter Herbert’s was a commentary Mrs Herbert never could bear in silence. “You don’t understand Anne, brother,” she said; “she –” and she was going on to paraphrase all the truth out of Anne’s remark, when, to Mr Herbert’s great relief, she was interrupted by the entrance of Cousin Effie and the baby.

Cousin Effie, after making her rustic salutation to the ladies, was lost in the delight of showing off the baby in all the beauty and pride of babyhood as she was. She did not even see the splendid Brussels lace on Mrs Herbert’s new mantilla, nor if she had, would she have known it from the vulgarest net. She did not notice Miss Anne’s beautiful French millinery. Effie was absorbed in displaying baby’s sweet dimples, her curls, her mottled arms, her plump little hands, and her dear rosy neck; the baby jingled her coral bells, and crowed in response to Effie’s crooning and May’s screams of delight at her showing off. Suddenly, by one of those impulses incident to babies, she dropped her coral bells, made a spring at Miss Anne, and clutched the roses in her bonnet. Anne shrieked, the baby screamed, and Effie, murmuring, “Dear little innocent creater!” and pressing her to her bosom, made her escape from the turmoil to the nursery.

“Are they ruined, mamma?” asked Anne with a tragic vehemence.

“Done for, Miss Anne,” interposed Walter Herbert, while the mother was mentally elaborating a paraphrase of the same fact. “An irreparable calamity, is it not?”

“Yes, it is, Mr Herbert, though I suppose you are laughing in your sleeve when you say so. I don’t know what babies are born for.”

“I sometimes wonder too, Miss Anne, when I see to what women they grow up.”

“Come, come, dear Anne,” said her mother, “we are wasting time – (what else do the Anne Carltons ever do with time?) – brother, we are going round to see Horace Copley’s house. Bandeli is doing the frescoes. The salon-à-manger is to be decorated after one in a celebrated villa on Como. You will like to see a place where you have a prospect of enjoying many a good dinner – do come, brother.”

There was malice in the twinkle of Mrs Herbert’s eye as she said this. Uncle Walter replied gruffly, “Thank you – no!”

“Oh, I am sure it will please you; the house is palatial; splendid drawing rooms, a suite of private apartments for the master, another for the mistress – we’ll suppose Grace, for so the world does say, now – a magnificent library, a billiard room, a callisthenic apartment – in short, everything that heart of man or woman can desire.”

During this harangue Miss Carlton stood tapping the floor impatiently with her pretty French boot, and fidgeting with her faultless Paris gloves. “I have been twice over the house,” continued the incessant woman; “it’s nearly perfect; but I could make one or two suggestions to the fortunate intended, Grace,” she concluded, casting a side glance, half impertinent and half silly, at Mr Herbert.

“Don’t make them, madam – don’t speak to Grace – don’t speak to me of that house, or anything relating to it.” Uncle Walter’s brow had been gathering the clouds that now burst. He could not help it.

Mrs Herbert retreated, and as the street door closed upon them, she said with a gasp, as if a bucket of water had been thrown in her face, “Brother Walter is dreadful today.”

“Did you ever see such affectation?” exclaimed Anne; “as if he would not give his right hand to see Grace mistress of that house!”

And Walter Herbert, left free to express what he felt, caught May in his arms, “You are right, my darling, you are right,” he said, “would we were all in that little white wooden house in Harlem!”

May said nothing, but she understood Walter Herbert far better than those “world’s women” did. She took out her little handkerchief and wiped the tears from his cheek, kissed him, and whispered, “I hate to see you cry, Uncle Walter; people that’s old should not cry – don’t.”

“I won’t, May, my little comforter, I won’t.” He set the child down and went his way.

It was near 12 o’clock when Esterly returned from a gallop to Harlem, whither Eleanor had sent him on some errands, as she said, to the new place, but mainly in the secret hope of refreshing her husband with a ride. How sweet and sure are nature’s restoring agencies. He came in with a light quick step, heightened color, and brightened eye. “Eleanor!” he exclaimed in a voice cheerful and tender, “still slaving for me?”

“Oh, no, Frank!” she said, holding up the manuscript, “I have just done my work: see if I have done it well.”

He turned the leaves – “Perfectly; your handwriting, Eleanor, is as clear as your head.” He fell on his knees, put his arm around her, and laid his head on his wife’s bosom – “Eleanor, I was a brute this morning; no – not I, but my brutish nature mastered me, and it does so often, and I am then so querulous, cross, unreasonable, unchristian, even your sweet patience irritates me, my children’s voices are discords, the world is one huge incubus oppressing me; then comes penitence bitter, but wholesome – and then, dear Nel, the floodtide of love, sweeping out of my life everything harsh and hurtful. Tell me, how is it, dear child, that you never get out of patience with me, never flout me, never, by any chance, speak a cross word to me.”

“Perhaps you would not be flattered, Frank, if I told you the simple truth,” replied Eleanor, turning his waving locks from off his white temples, and smiling sweetly, as she looked in his face, beaming with tenderness.

“The simple truth, my child? You can’t speak anything else.”

“Well then, Frank, when you are out of humor, I feel just as I do when baby is cross with teething. It is her inevitable misery and my business to help her, to divert and soothe her as well as I can.”

“That is not flattering to my manhood, Nelly,” said Esterly with a very dim smile.

“The bargain was ‘simple truth,’ not flattery, Frank, and it is as simple truth when I tell you that these little trials are mere exhalations from the ground, that melt away in the dear sunshine of our love; that you are my teacher, my master, my daily bread.”

“Ma’am!” called out Bridget, hastily knocking at the door, and half opening it, “the carman is waiting.”

The husband and wife started to their feet like lovers surprised at a tête-à-tête, and like lovers, as they were, they kissed and parted, each going with a lightened heart to the burdens of the day.

With more of such Christian unions as that of the Esterlys, there would be fewer divorces for “incompatibility,” and a long lull to the stormy question of “women’s rights.”

Chapter 24

“Let her here a shelter find,

Shield the shorn lamb from the wind.”

If our readers have not forgotten our humble little friend, Letty, they will be glad to know that if she had not conquered her love, she had mastered herself. No thought, bidden or unbidden, no vagrant fancy now blended her future with Lisle’s. He had become her earthly providence, and she carried out, in a human relation, the extravagance of those fanatics who make self-annihilation a test of religious safety; who say one is only fit to be saved when one is willing to be lost. Letty’s love for Archibald, and her desire to requite his generosity to her, produced a result that genius might have failed to attain. It was her hour of study at the piano, when she was startled by the nasal voice of a stranger, who, entering her parlor, said, “Miss Letty Alsop, I believe?”

“Yes,” said Letty, rising, and setting a chair for the visitor; “do you wish to see Madam Steinberg?”

“No; it’s you I came to see, Letty. I call you Letty, for I always heard of you by that name.” One who has chanced to see the fluttering of a dove who, lighting in a poultry yard, encounters a mature Shanghai hen, may imagine the relative appearance of the parties en scene. “I conclude you don’t know me,” continued the Shanghai; “but I am the one you wrote letters to for your Aunt Lisle.”

“Ah, you are – Miss – Clapp!” said Letty, stammering, and blushing, as sundry recollections rushed upon her. Miss Adeline noticed the blush, and said, mentally, ‘I thought so.’ For once she felt some difficulty in a direct approach to the matter in hand. Perhaps she was touched by the appealing tenderness of Letty’s demeanor; an ox will not set its hoof upon a child. After looking about the room, as if taking an inventory of its furniture, “What a spruce little parlor,” she said; “I suppose you have a privilege in it, as you appeared to be playing when I came in – of course it’s the family parlor, isn’t it?”

“No, Miss Clapp; it is my private sitting room.”

“Dear me! Oh, I see. You teach the young Steinbergs, and this is thrown into your salary.”

It did not comport with Letty’s Puritan habits of truth to connive at Miss Clapp’s mistake. “No,” she said, “my salary does not include the parlor.”

“Then, how do you afford it? rents are so up in the city.”

Letty made no reply. She looked tormented.

“I see,” continued Miss Clapp, “that you have feelings, Letty, and I don’t mean to hurt them; but I must say, a young lady is in a precarious situation – I don’t mean that exactly – but it’s not prudent, for a young lady to live in lodgings that a young gentleman pays for; and there’s no one living has a better right to advise you than I, if that is your case, and Archy Lisle is the man.” Letty gave way to inevitable tears. “I am sorry for you,” continued Miss Adeline; “I don’t believe any harm of you, for you look as innocent as a lamb.” Letty did not just then feel lamb-like; a feeling of resistance rose in her gentle bosom. Miss Clapp was checked in her tramp into Letty’s affairs, and, looking round for something to fill up the pause, she saw a portfolio on the table, with drawing utensils beside it, and putting her hand upon it, “Do you draw?” she asked.

“Yes, a little,” replied Letty, rising to rescue the prey from the fowler.

“Oh don’t take it away,” said Miss Adeline, “I admire to look at drawings;” and forthwith opening the portfolio, she shook the contents upon the table; and before Letty, whose face reddened with more painful vexation than she ever in her life felt before, could gather them up she had snatched from among them a crayon sketch of Archibald reading by lamplight – as he did to Letty many an evening – with Steinberg’s little granddaughter leaning her elbow on the table, and gazing at him. It was a pretty and a faithful picture, and showed that love had not deserted the art it first inspired. Miss Adeline held it afar and near, on one side and on the other, and then broke out in a tone of utter amazement: “Did you do this Letty?” She probably heard Letty’s faintly articulated “Yes,” for she proceeded, “It’s much better done than any of the others! Why, I don’t see but it is as well done as Cheeny’s, and they say he makes men and women look like angels. Dear me! I always thought Archy handsome; but this is splendid! Why Cheeny gets two or three hundred dollars a piece for his. A bright thought! You can take likenesses – how much better for you than keeping on dependent. I have a lot of acquaintances, and I will make it a business to recommend you.”

“Oh no, no, no, Miss Clapp,” said Letty, with more vehemence than she had ever spoken before; “don’t recommend me – don’t speak about me!” and taking the drawing from Miss Clapp, whose touch seemed to her to desecrate that which she had kept for the contemplation of her most private hours, she returned it to the portfolio; and having gathered up the scattered drawings, she laid it aside, as she would out of the reach of a mischievous child. She felt Miss Adeline’s presence to be intolerable, and mustering courage, she said, looking at her watch, “You must excuse me, Miss Clapp – it is time for the children’s lessons.”

But Adeline Clapp was not to be repulsed by the tactics of civilized warfare. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “you must keep the young ones out for a while; I have not entered on business yet. I saw you had quick feelings, and I did not want to hurt them; but now I’ll come to the point.” Letty sank back into her chair, as if a dentist, with his instrument of torture, were approaching her. “To commence, then,” resumed Miss Adeline; “I think I can see as far into a millstone as anyone, and I believe that you are correct, and that Archy Lisle is honorable.” This profession of faith indicated nothing to the artless girl, and she made no answer, though Miss Clapp paused apparently for one. She proceeded: “You know, Letty, the city is different from the country; there we know all about folks, here they know a little, and guess the rest; and when a young woman that’s rather pretty, to say the least, carries a gold watch, and has a drawing master, and the most expensive of music masters, as I hear you have, and a private parlor, and a young gentleman visiting her for a constancy – why, people will talk.”

“What do you mean, Miss Clapp? Talk about me! I do not know a human creature in this great, full city, but the Steinbergs and Mr Lisle.”

“My dear, what does that signify, so long as they know Mr Lisle? Folks will talk – folks live by talking. Why, Letty, I heard a drawing room full of ladies talking over the pros and cons about you and Archy, and I did not let on that I knew either of you.”

“But you should, Miss Clapp,” said Letty, speaking now with a calmness that surprised herself, and a gentle dignity that, for a moment, awed Adeline Clapp. “You should have told them that I have no father, no mother, no brother or sister – but that Mr Lisle is all of these to me; that he placed me here with good people, where I am earning my bread; and that all I have, beyond that, he gives me – masters and books, and my sitting room, and my ‘gold watch!’” If Letty could be sarcastic, then her tremulous smile, as she uttered the last clause, was sarcastic; but it vanished as she added, with intense sadness, “And he has given me what I can never have again – his time.”

“And his affection, perhaps you think?” said Miss Adeline, plunging her probe to the quick.

“Yes,” replied Letty, with an heroic effort, “yes, as a dear brother gives it to a dear sister – so, and not otherwise.”

“That’s well – that’s very well. But, child, I am older than you, and I must tell you it is not prudent to go on so; there’s no telling when brotherly love may blow out into something higher-colored. You and Archy are running risks. He has given you all duty will let him, for Archy is – married.”

“Married!” Letty covered her face with her hands.

Whether it were white or red, whether it expressed mortification, disappointment, or misery, Adeline Clapp could not guess; in any case, she meant to speak soothingly. “I knew you would feel,” she said; “but it’s always the way in our family, to bring things to a head. And so I repeat it – Archy is married. A Clapp’s word is as good as a bond. What I tell you is truth, though not the whole truth – that will come out in time; the circumstances are peculiar. I leave you now to judge for yourself whether it is right for you to live on in your present style. Not but what I think it right that Archy should befriend you, and I am sure I am quite willing to bear half the expense –” Miss Adeline was stopped in her career by Letty’s hands falling into her lap, and her head dropping on to her shoulder. Not one word had she heard since Miss Clapp’s authoritative declaration that Archibald was married.

Adeline Clapp roused the house with her outcries, and as she perceived Letty coming to life again under the tender ministrations of the Steinbergs, she took her leave, congratulating herself upon her wisdom in ascertaining the exact condition of affairs, and putting a bar to their further progress.

Archibald Lisle now knew far more of the world in its good and bad aspects, and far more of the theory and the actuality of the world of sentiment, than when, in his youth, he unconsciously stole away poor Letty’s heart. Without vanity, he was aware, that placed in the relationship she was to him, and restricted to his society, he might become the idol to her that a girl of loving heart will make to herself, and he conscientiously guarded against the danger by talking to her of her future career of teacher, by keeping the ultimate purpose of his liberalities steadily in view, and by selecting such books for reading to her as she might turn to account in her future occupation. We do not mean to intimate that Archibald was self-denying in his devotion to Letty. His evenings, at old Steinberg’s, harmonized with his domestic tastes, in danger of starvation in a bachelor’s boarding house life with all its egotistic little comforts. The kindling of Letty’s soft eye at his approach, her sweet cheerful satisfaction in his society, the caresses of the little Steinbergs, and their glee when like all lovers of children – childish as they – he showered toys and candies upon them, and an occasional gossip with the old people, all combined to diffuse a home atmosphere over Letty’s little sitting room, and to make it a balmy rest, after the dreary and weary bustle of everyday life. Lisle had now and then, at long intervals, spoken to Letty of Miss Herbert. He had mentioned meeting her, had quoted some brilliant remark of hers, or alluded to some interesting circumstance that bore a relation to her, and when he did so, there was a flash from his eye, and a quivering of his lip that never escaped Letty’s observation. But strange as it may seem, this did not make her unhappy. She had settled it in her mind, that Miss Herbert was Archibald’s fate, but when it was to be accomplished, had the indistinctness and mystery that death has to common minds – and so had her own future. It was neither near, nor afar off. So long as she satisfied her masters, did earnestly her duty to the little Steinbergs, and could pass half her evenings beside Archy, she lived in absolute content with the present. And could this have been her eternity, good little orthodox Puritan as she was, we fear she would not have changed it.

But now had come the declaration from that relentless Miss Clapp that must be “the end-all.” And that there might be no misunderstanding, Miss Clapp followed up her interview with a note, as follows:

Dear girl, I did not say quite all I wished, owing to your fainting which, I suppose, came from the heat of the room, and your surprise. I thought it my duty to tell you of a certain person’s marriage, but as it is yet a secret, don’t let it transpire, and don’t allude to it to him.

A.C.

Poor Letty! She could have plucked out her tongue easier than to have told it to another, or alluded to it to Archibald. All day she was restless, and in answer to the kind solicitude of the Steinbergs, she complained of headache, and headache and heartache she had. Margaretta Steinberg brought her in a basket of exquisite flowers, and a novel from Mr Roberts, a lodger in Steinberg’s house. This Mr Roberts was head master of a noted Latin school. He had sought an introduction to Letty through the Steinbergs, and had lately been lavish in certain demonstrations, which her kind friends thought most auspicious omens of her future; and even the children interchanged whispers about “dear Letty’s beau,” and smiled when they brought in his offerings. And Mr Roberts might have had a fair chance of winning any sound heart, but not poor Letty’s. The novel remained with uncut leaves on the table, and the costly flowers would have withered there, but for Margaretta’s interposition.

Letty, living out of the world, and having no data by which to calculate its chances, never, for a moment, doubted that Archibald was married to Miss Herbert, and all day her tormented brain was exercised in divining the reasons of the secrecy – “Why Archy had not even had the kindness to hint it to her? and how in the world Adeline Clapp had found out what Archibald had meant to keep secret?” She sent away her drawingmaster, she vainly tried to get through with her daily task with her pupils. Their report brought in Madam Steinberg, and she, alarmed by Letty’s burning cheeks, and hot hands, sent her husband waddling round to Mr Lisle’s office to ask him to send a physician. But Steinberg not finding him there, or at his lodgings, the good old people, with German placidity, determined to defer medical aid, and in the mean time to administer, a homeopathic narcotic, not so innocent as it might have been, as the old lady, on paying her last visit to Letty’s attic before going to bed, and finding her sleepless, trebled the dose. How blindly mortals work out Heaven’s beneficent purposes! Dear old Madam Steinberg never forgot Letty’s good night to her, and often repeated it with streaming eyes, “Oh, how kind you are to me, Madam Steinberg,” she said – “to me, a stranger;” and then clasping her little hands, she added, “Seeing this, shall I not trust myself to him who pities me, even as a father pitieth his children – I do, I do!” The trust and the prayer were answered.

Lisle had been walking till a late hour that evening, taking no note of time. Life seemed to him made up of disturbed and disturbing forces, all inharmonious. Letty in her artlessness, her gratitude to him, and her unworldliness, stood before him in something like reproachful contrast to Grace, who was being overcome by the world. Lisle felt, as he had never felt before, the fact of Letty’s love. He felt an irrepressible gush of pity and tenderness for her – not love; no, that comes not for the bidding. He was approaching Canal Street, and turned into it, remembering, with some contrition, that a longer interval than usual had passed since he had seen her. He heard a cry of fire, and perceived it was in his direction. Still, so common an occurrence excited no alarm, till he perceived the outcries concentrating near Steinberg’s. In a moment after, he saw the flames burst out from the old man’s little wooden dwelling. In another instant he was there, and penetrating through the crowd, he met Steinberg, face to face, who, with a child in each arm, was screaming in German – so completely had he lost his head – “Letty’s in the attic, save her! – the dear child! – mein Gott! mein Gott!” Lisle understood him – he knew the localities of the house. The fire had broken out in a crazy back kitchen, and had made some progress when the sleepers in the front rooms were awakened by the smoke and crackling. “Bring a ladder!” cried Lisle, “there’s a person in the attic that must be saved!” A ladder was brought, but intrepid as our firemen notoriously are, they recoiled from applying it. “Ther’s no use,” cried one, “the flames are licking round the rafters – it can’t be done.” Lisle sprang upon the ladder. “Come down, young man,” cried another. “You are lost,” shrieked a third, with a horrid oath, “you are lost, if you enter! – it’s death – it’s death, over and over.” Lisle paused on the topmost rung, but not to retreat. With characteristic presence of mind he took a silk scarf from his neck, put it over his face, and secured it. With one thrust of his strong arm he demolished the frail window sash, a dense column of smoke rushed outward, and Lisle disappeared. From below arose cries upon His name, who, if forgotten till human help fails, is surely then remembered. Breaths were suspended till, issuing from the blackness, and followed by the flames, Lisle reappeared bearing Letty, whom he had wrapped in a blanket, as if he carried but a child’s weight. A general acclamation burst from the crowd; such a response as ever comes from man’s soul to an heroic deed.

Archibald, tearing the cover from his face that had saved him in his mortal strife with death, perceived that Letty was incapable of motion and unconscious. Plenty of hands came to his aid, and she was borne to the nearest safe house, and laid on a sofa. Restoratives were brought, and medical aid was sought and found. Her pulse beat feebly. Archibald knelt before her, and unconsciously kissed over and over the little hands he held in his, and felt the pulses, that had quickened at the faintest sound of his approaching footstep, grow feebler and feebler.

“Spare your pains, friends,” said the physician with professional coolness, addressing the assistants who were lavishing restoratives; “it is all over with the poor girl. It is death by suffocation.”

“It is not death; it can not be death!” cried Archibald; “Letty! Letty – dear Letty!” She answered not. “Oh, Letty – dear Letty! rouse yourself. Speak to me – to Archy!” There was a slight, a perceptible tremulousness of the eyelids, and the least possible movement of her lips to smile. It was the last vibration to the voice that had mastered the finest chords of her being – henceforward, still forever.

The coarse, hard-handed men who stood around, bowed their heads. “Can we do anything for you, sir?” said one and another in subdued voices. Lisle shook his head, and they slowly departed, one whispering, “I think he is her brother;” and another answering, “Something more, I think.”

While the lady of the house went with her domestics to prepare an apartment for the exigency, Archibald was, as he desired, left alone with Letty. The first motion of his soul was a devout thanksgiving to the great Shepherd that he had taken this lamb away from the perils of life to his own inexhaustible love – that she had passed from the rough places of earth without dread or consciousness, to rest and peace eternal.

And then, by that preternatural power which the memory has at such periods of exaltation, the passages of their past association passed in revision before him. Her loving, pleasant childhood in his father’s house; her fond clingings to him in fancied dangers; her graceful little form playfully hidden by the vines of the old porch, springing to meet him with eager joy, when he came in from his field sports; the refinements that, as she grew older and more perceptive, she sprinkled over the homeliness of rustic life; the consolation of her filial devotion to his father, and her cheerful patience with the little fry at home. And, as if by a spell, came up the memory of thrilling tones, of words half spoken, of sudden blushes, and as sudden tears. These, passed by at the time as caprice or moodiness, were now revelations. And the last and dearest chapter of their joint lives, Letty’s happiest days at old Steinberg’s, her sweet contentment in his mere presence, her gratitude for even his smallest kindness, not conveyed in words made common by common thanks, but in floods of light that came beaming from her soul through her eyes, in smiles that are the spirit’s language, in tones that breathe music into the simplest sentence.

“Oh, I have been hard, unkind, unfeeling!” was the cry of his inmost soul. “I loved you, Letty – truly. But why have I wasted on another what should have been yours? Bitter, bitter, vain regrets! Now you are as far beyond my reach, as you were above my deservings.”

Is it not ever thus? Is any, the happiest relation of life, severed without leaving us to lament over the imperfection of our love and its irremediable failures?

Chapter 25

“Enfin sa bouche flétrie

Ose prendre un noble accent.”

There are tides in the affairs of men; tides so strong as to sweep every obstruction away and bear down every opposing force. Circumstances had of late been auspicious to Copley, and the object that for years he had pursued with unwavering determination, was within his grasp. The Esterlys had been out of the way. Little May, who had stood like the angel at the gate of Paradise, pointing a sword against him, was gone; and Uncle Walter, though the treasure of his life was at stake, became hopeless, and resigned himself to the common law of non-interference.

Had Lisle, before this crisis, cast off the shackles of his reserve, risen above his self-distrust, and manifested to Grace his unconquered and unconquerable love, she might have responded to him, and risen by the force of her own upward tendencies out of sight of the subtle spell that Copley had addressed to her lower nature. But Lisle had now withdrawn wholly from her society, and though his love was not extinguished, it was buried deep in his heart and covered with the ashes of despair.

Events are sometimes in such curious relation and proximity, that one does not wonder they have been referred to conjunctions of the stars. It was on the evening of Letty’s death, that Grace, at twilight, was sitting alone at the bay window of Mrs Herbert’s library, not gazing at the tints of parting day that smiled on the budding trees opposite, but taking an introspective view, where, just then, a soft and pleasing twilight pervaded too. She was endeavoring to overpower the still small voice that yet murmured against her lover, with such thoughts as, “how kind, how lavish he was to dear little Herbert;” “how generously forgiving of Frank’s obstinate prejudice against him;” “how considerate of his interests;” “how prompt and noble for poor Violet’s relief.”

The door opened, and the ideal of her reverie glided in, approached her, and bent over her chair with a low and ardent expression of his joy in finding her, as he wished to find her, alone. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. She did not withdraw it, and he saw in her beaming face a happy augury.

The words, and the more expressive silence, the emotions, and the demonstrations that made the two hours that followed an epoch in the lives of both can not be told – must not be told, for the time was sure to come when Grace would wish all memory and record of them effaced. How many hours of life glide away colorless and unnoted; and how vitalized two hours may be; how bright! shedding a soft lustre over the past, and illuminating the future and illimitable! What swift movement have they, and yet what anchorage and sweet rest! What outpouring of hearts, what telling of their histories, what solving of their mysteries!

Such were not Grace’s; not even then, in those two happiest hours of all her intercourse with Copley, was there the beatitude of a true love. But they ended as such hours do, with promises, and plighted vows, and with some earthly regards and arrangements. Copley had business which would take him South for a few days, and it was therefore agreed that their engagement should not be announced till he returned. In the mean time Walter Herbert was first to be told; a note was to be written to Eleanor (a cold tremor seized Grace at the thought of these duties) and the fact, as in courtesy due, was to be imparted to Mrs Herbert and her daughter.

Copley was just transferring from his own finger to Grace’s a diamond ring, to be the symbol of betrothal; her hand rested impassive in his, while he poured a torrent of tears over it (whence came they? had he a good angel? and was he then possessed by it? were questions Grace often afterward asked herself), when, at the sound of a footstep in the entry, approaching, he dropped it, and shot off into an alcove at the end of the room, where he stood in shadow.

“My!” exclaimed the most unwelcome intruder. “I am so glad, Grace Herbert, to find you at home and disengaged; I seldom have that good luck with you. Dear me! is that you, Mr Copley? Oh – ah – I might have known; but there being no light here – well, moonlight is pleasantest for some occasions that shall be nameless. Oh, how well I remember one moonlight night! Well now I hope I don’t intrude,” continued Miss Clapp – it could be no other than Miss Adeline Clapp – lowering her voice to Grace; “I dare say I have broken up a tête-à-tête again. I have not been to Mrs Tallis’ since her reception till this morning, and I found Mr Copley tête-à-tête there; odd, is n’t it?”

The obscurity of the room, and the imperceptiveness of Miss Clapp, favored all parties. She did not see the look Copley darted at her, nor did Grace perceive his sudden paleness, nor betray her own mounting color. On went Adeline Clapp: “Mrs Tallis looked uncommon handsome this morning; she had on the loveliest silk, just the color of a dove’s wing, Paris made, sleeves entire new cut. I asked her for the pattern, and if she remembers to give it to me, I’ll send it to you, if you wish, Grace.”

“Thank you.”

Miss Clapp proceeded: “What a kind of a superstitious look Mrs Tallis’ little girl has. She’ll not be long spared! How she did run on this morning, Mr Copley. I guess Mrs Tallis felt something she said to be rather searching – don’t you, Mr Copley?”

“I do not remember a word she said,” replied Copley.

“Why, don’t you? how odd. Don’t you remember she asked her mother ‘how long her papa would be gone?’ and when her mother told her a month, ‘I wish it were a month now,’ said she, and the tears ran down her pretty cheeks, and her mother kissed her – she does love that child; and then – why it’s strange you did not observe – she looked up in her mother’s face, and says she, ‘Mamma, do you love papa?’ ‘Run up to the nursery, my dear,’ says the mother, and she went just like a little lamb. But my! I wonder you did not hear her say, as she stood with her little hand on the door, ‘I never send you away, mamma – I hate the nursery, and I hate Mr Copley.’ Her mother got up and kissed her, and checked her. I’m sure she spoke loud enough for you to hear her, Mr Copley.”

Copley deigned no reply, and Miss Adeline at last perceived that her persistent monologue met with but an ungracious reception; but nothing ever disturbed her equilibrium, and she wound up with saying, “I feel as if it was but friendly to you, Miss Grace, and to Mr Copley, too, to tell you that I surmise even that poor little child has heard that people talk about you and her mamma, Mr Copley; and that is the make of people – they will keep on talking when a gentleman pays, well, rather particular attention to a married lady, visiting her every day, as it were, when her husband is off on a journey.”

“Madam!” said Copley, with so fierce an expression that even Miss Adeline started, and exclaimed, “Gracious me! Mr Copley, I did not mean to touch your feelings. I admire to see gentlemen polite to married ladies; and if you aren’t sensible of any imprudence, there’s no harm done by just my speaking between us three.”

Copley had quite recovered himself, and, taking up his hat, he replied with his usual coolness, “Much impertinence, madam, but no possible harm;” and then, murmuring a few sentences to Grace, too low for Miss Clapp’s greedy ear, he took his leave.

“Miss Clapp,” said Grace, rising, “you must excuse me, I – I –”

“Oh now, Grace, I can’t excuse you. Miss Carlton told me you had no engagement this evening. I have been waiting ever since Eleanor’s boy sickened to speak to you, or to her. It seemed more suitable to consult with a married lady; but she is always engaged, or out of town, or something. It’s about Archy; and you and she are friends to us both. Now do listen to me.”

Grace had risen, and was quivering with impatience to get out of Miss Adeline’s grasp, but Archibald Lisle’s complication with the insatiable woman turned the tide, and she reseated herself with resignation.

“It’s a pretty long story,” began Miss Adeline; “but then, Grace, I know you’ll have a fellow feeling, when we get into it. But it’s so dark here, won’t you have lights?” Grace rang the bell. The servant lighted the gas. “My goodness, how pale you look!” exclaimed Miss Adeline, staring at Grace, as the light flashed on her face, and for a moment she was awed, without comprehending the height and depth of feeling it expressed. But a glimpse into heaven would not long have checked Miss Adeline’s tongue in its communication of her self-centered interests.

“I am sure,” she resumed, “you’ll approve of my feelings – there can’t be two opinions about it – as brother says, it’s only a question of time. Well, to commence at the commencement. Archy and my brother Dates were classmates in college. Archy was first-rate then, as he is now, and Dates was sort o’ behindhand at mathematics and those kind of studies; and father hired Archy to give him extra lessons which Archy did, at a pretty handsome price – you know Archy’s folks were rather poor, but we did not feel any difference on that account. I hope all the Clapps are too noble for that. Archy was invited down to Clapp Bank, to celebrate his birthday. He had paid me considerable attention before that; and though he had not a dollar but what he earned, and his father was a mechanic, and my father had been a wholesale shoe merchant, and had gone out of business with a handsome fortune – though nothing to compare with what we have now, with the rise of real estate, and factory stock, and so forth –”

“Oh, do come to the point, Miss Clapp.”

“Well, I am close upon it. I was just going to say that none of our folks would have made any objection if Archy had delicate views; though father had been a member of the Legislature for five years, and Uncle Medad was in Congress; they felt I would have selected Archy before any other young man I knew. Well, that evening we had a first-rate time. It was moonlight, and the young men took the girls a rowing on the lake. Archy took me, and then we played plays, and had forfeits; and Anne Jane Evans adjudged Archy and I to go through the marriage ceremony to redeem our forfeits. Pa was in his study with Judge Eastly, and the judge went through the whole ceremony of the Church of England service with us. I can’t say I looked upon it then as anything more than a kind of forerunner. Well, after commencement, Dates went off to China, and Archy studied law, and went into practice, and never came to Clappville again. Well, you know how it is, Grace; when one is attached, and is, as Dates says, expecting ‘relations of reciprocity,’ one don’t give up the ship for a trifle. Well, you know Archy made the tower of Europe, and while he was gone, I did for his family just as if I were daughter and sister. Well, last fall, Judge Eastly was down at Clappville, and talking over old times with Dates and me, and so, says he, ‘Take care, Adeline,’ says he, ‘that that chap of a New York lawyer don’t claim you for his wife when he comes home.’ I asked the judge his meaning, and he said he referred to the marriage ceremony, and he said there had been two just parallel cases in Massachusetts that bound the parties. The first lawyers had been consulted, and they gave it as their opinion, that it was ‘a legal and binding contract.’ These were the judge’s words.”

Grace’s interest was now thoroughly excited. “Good heaven,” she exclaimed, “you do not mean –”

“Hear me through, Grace Herbert. I don’t mean anything but what is fair and above board. Well, I won’t repeat all that the judge and Dates said. The judge thought that with my large fortune in hand, for by this time, you know, pa was deceased, and the estate settled; the judge thought that Archibald, knowing the points of the law, would claim me, whether or no. Well, Dates was ambitious for me, and he thought Archy was not quite up to my mark, and wanted me to keep it hushed up. I did not say much, but I had my own feelings. It’s true, I did not know Archy’s views, but knowing he would have the best of the bargain, I did not hesitate. I knew the day he landed. I laid all my plans, straight-work, as you would mark out a quilt. Matrimony is a solemn duty; and to be sure, I own I had entered on it rather lightly, but not without feeling – perhaps it was the same with Archy. I meant to behave honorably, and give him opportunities of falling in love, before we took up the stiches; and so I told Dates; and have written him the same since I came to New York.” Miss Adeline paused, and Grace’s face expressing, even to her dull perceptions, something of the mingled wonder and disgust she felt,

“I see,” she resumed, “that you don’t quite feel with me. Perhaps you think it would have been more prudent for me to have told him at once that we were as good as man and wife?”

“Oh, no – no, no, Miss Clapp, never tell him that.”

“Never! why, we are; and can’t you see it must not run on as it is now. He takes no hints, and he’s all the while paying attention to the girl Letty Alsop – at old Steinberg’s. I have found out who she is; it is not prudent, as regards her, and if Archy has really forgotten all about that evening, as he pretends to, don’t you think it’s quite time he was reminded? Now that’s just the question I came to ask you.”

Grace had not heard this long story without arriving at the conviction, that Archibald Lisle had entangled himself with this inevitable woman. “What is to be done?” thought she, rapidly reviewing in her own mind Adeline Clapp’s story; “that noble fellow must not be caught by this ‘mousing owl,’ but what can I do for him? – nothing. It is not a matter for a third person’s meddling. Archibald Lisle will be the best manager of his own affairs, and the sooner he gets out of the web this horrid woman has spun about him the better.” And so, with effort suppressing a smile, she said, “Miss Clapp, I see but one course for you to pursue, that is, to make known at once to Mr Lisle what your brother calls your ‘relations of reciprocity.’ He will, as he chooses, confirm or dissolve them at once – good night.”

“She might have had the politeness to wait till I got out of the door,” said Miss Adeline, as Grace fleetly vanished up the staircase.

“‘Dissolve them, indeed’ – that he can’t do; and dissolve five thousand five hundred a year – it’s all at seven per cent – that he won’t do; but I kind o’ dread to throw open the blinds at once; what is the use of asking advice?”

Some of our readers may recoil with as much displeasure from Grace’s betrothal as she felt disgust at the presumption of Miss Clapp’s expectations, for there are those who in spite of the discordant matches of every day, will as freshly wonder at every new one as the child, who on looking at an old man with a young wife, exclaimed, “What a poor two you make!” Not that the world, in general, by which comprehensive phrase is designated the particular circle in which Miss Herbert moved, would feel anything other than perhaps a momentary sensation at her rare good fortune. The general feeling in relation to any woman being, that she is better off in port than afloat.

But there may be some, who comprehending the nobility of Grace’s nature, will feel a keen disappointment at this crisis of her fate, having believed that though uncontrolled, unguided, unwarned, she would, in Ida Roorbach’s phrase, “have worked out her own salvation,” and not have yielded at last to extraneous influences. She had clung to her distasteful home with the one dear compensation of her Uncle Walter’s presence, though solicited by the advantageous parties, enumerated by Mr Herbert to Lisle, and others quite as advantageous, unknown to him. She was now the victim of an illusion, an illusion to which an imaginative unoccupied young women, cast into a state of society with which she has few sympathies, is most miserably exposed.

Letter writing was not Copley’s speciality, but he wrote, each day of his short absence, sincerely, and therefore earnestly. He spoke of the future as a fait accompli. Grace passed carelessly over his request that the finishing up, and decorations of his house, should be controlled by her judgment and taste, who “was soon to be its adored mistress;” and over his exultation in cheating the town of its gossip – though with this she rather sympathized, to dwell on his professions of ardent love, his impatience to return and bask in the summer of her kindness, after the “polar winter he had endured,” and like phrases, common coin in common circulation. Grace took them at their current value. The happiness of being loved is next to that of loving, and perhaps she felt that the perfection of the one made up for the still haunting consciousness of the imperfection of the other.

Chapter 26

The Right and the Wrong

Side of the Tapestry

It was a significant circumstance that Grace did not communicate to one of her friends, not even to her dear Uncle Walter, her engagement by word of mouth. Was it that she instinctively avoided the truth that flashes from the face before the soul is shrouded in plastic words and conventional phrases?

Copley had recently gained in Mr Herbert’s good opinion. He had even, on one or two occasions, eagerly praised him in Grace’s hearing, but the sigh, with which he ended, indicated but too truly an ineradicable disapprobation of the man. There was a singular sympathy between the old man and the young woman; an understanding and correspondence that did not need the intervention of words. And Uncle Walter was a man of few words, especially on those occasions when ordinary men are diffuse. The more intense the heat, the less crackling was there.

Grace met Mr Herbert, for the first time after her brief written announcement to him of her engagement, the next morning at breakfast. He was a very late riser, and she was accustomed to give him his breakfast. It was their hour of privilege and security, Mrs Carlton being then in the field, laying out the momentous duties of her productive life. Grace met her uncle with her usual dutiful salutation, and took her seat. Both parties were silent. That was no unusual circumstance, for there was that perfect love between them that casteth out fear and restraint of all sorts. They were sometimes silent through the whole meal, and sometimes merry as children. Grace poured out a cup of coffee; Mr Herbert took it, but their eyes did not meet. The servant brought in his hot toast and egg and placed them by him. He touched neither, but sat for a few moments, looking out of the window as far away from poor Grace as possible, and then seizing a morning paper he turned over its mammoth pages; it would not do; his blinded eyes could not see the words, and the rustling only sharpened the silence. He threw it down, rose from his seat, and was running away like a child from what he had not courage to face. Uncle Walter was a child. Grace sprang to him, and throwing her arms around him, and bursting into tears, said, “You must not go so, dear Uncle Walter. Speak one word to me, won’t you? can’t you? Well, then, I will undo, unsay it all!”

“Oh, no, no!” he cried, his heart at last finding vent in words; “no, you have done it, my child, my all; I am foolish, Grace – I am old – God forgive me! God bless you!” And then gently disengaging her arms, he seated her on the sofa, and left her sobbing there; and taking his hat and cane, he left the room and hobbled through the long entry from the breakfast room to the outer door, then returned, and half opening the door, in a sort of choking between laughing and crying, “Mind, Grace,” he said, “you give me notice to quit in time. I’ll set up my rest with Eleanor and May; I’ll not stay in this house after the only live person in it leaves it.”

“Engaged! let me see her note,” cried Anne Carlton to her mother, who had summoned her daughter to her room to receive the news. She read Grace’s missive. It was a short reading, merely a respectful announcement of her engagement and an injunction to present secrecy.

“Secrecy!” exclaimed Miss Anne, “I wonder who will care to tell the news – men are shameful! It was only last Thursday, at Mrs Smith’s, that Horace Copley said such things to me, and looked more than he said.”

“My dear!”

“Oh, ma’am, you need not undertake to convince me that he did not mean anything – I know him. What’s become of your study of human nature, ma’am? You’ve missed in your lesson this time.”

“My dear!”

“Well, it’s too provoking. I should have accepted Edmund Fay or Guy Clayton if you had not harped upon what you called a ‘wavering scale,’ and such nonsense.”

“My dear Anne, you are not respectful. One can not always clearly discern the future.”

“Oh, I know. But you are always in a fog, and you always think you have nothing to do but heave your lead – human nature! that’s a riddle you can’t read, ma’am!” (After a pause,) “I never heard him admire anything in Grace but her aristocratic air. And she and her uncle profess to look down upon fashion, and fortune, and the world, and so on. I never believed them. Who is a man of the world, if Copley is not? So dreadfully shocked they were at our asking Belson and Count de Salle. They and Copley are birds of a feather.”

“Not quite, my dear. Not that I defend Brother Walter or Grace, for criticizing us; they knew I did not approve of intimacies with those men, nor would I exclude them from large parties, because they are not just what they should be – ‘judge not,’ etc.”

“Oh, mamma, what is the use of talking so? Everybody knows what Sam Belson is, and you know besides.”

“My dear, there is a difference between Belson and Copley. Belson lives by – I don’t know what, possibly gambling; he does not respect public opinion; he – in short, he lives freely; whereas Copley is prudent as regards public opinion; he has immense wealth, and does not waste it. Of late I hear nothing against him; on the contrary, I am told he has been confirmed, and you know he has a class in our Sunday School.”

“All humbug, mamma – every bit of it humbug; all to throw dust in people’s eyes. Confirmed, indeed! Confirmed on Sunday, and fooling with Mrs Tallis every day in the week. How easy old folks are humbugged.”

Mrs Herbert was on the verge of irritation, – she never went over. “I must confess I do not like this levity, Anne,” she said; “and if you really have so low an opinion of Mr Copley, I own I do not see why you are not willing to give him up to Grace.”

“Oh, low opinion; I have no such thing. I look upon Horace Copley as the very first match in New York. I am not in love with him. If he should marry anyone else, I should not hang myself; but to have Grace Herbert the one taken, and I to be the one left! Besides, I never professed to be particular. I am willing a man should amuse himself the way he likes best. One thing please give me credit for, mamma – I never was humbugged by Grace.” So far as entertaining a blind faith in human virtue is humbug, Anne Carlton may claim complete exemption from it.

“What do you mean, my child?” asked Mrs Herbert.

“Why, I always said that Grace was contriving and working for this prize, and would go through fire and water to attain it. Now tell me, mamma – you understand human nature, you know – would any girl in Grace’s position pass by the opportunities she has had, unless for an ulterior object? Think of a girl, without fortune, rejecting the Honorable Mr Grey, of a noble English family, possessing everything that Grace professes to admire. Tut, tut, mamma; it is not so easy to throw dust in my eyes. Grace is getting on – she is two-and-twenty, and past.” She paused, and then added, “When is the wedding coming off?”

“That I don’t know; probably soon – there is no reason for delay. But, my dear, I do hope you will put the best face on the matter, and congratulate Grace. I should be mortified to have her suspect you of envying her good fortune; indeed we ought always to rejoice with them that rejoice.”

“Never fear, ma’am – I can play my own cards.” Anne was leaving the room, and turning back, “‘It’s an ill wind that blows no good!’” she said, with beaming satisfaction. “We shall have a clear riddance of old Walter Herbert now.”

“Don’t speak in that way, Anne; you know I have endeavored to do my duty, and make a happy home for my husband’s brother – but I have thought of that.”

The “well-laid schemes of mice and men” are disconcerted, and so were Mrs Herbert’s; but before evening the oil had flowed over the ruffled waves, and she had reverted to her usual dead calm, and was harassing Walter Herbert with her eternal commonplaces.

“If,” she said, “as would appear now, Mr Copley has been long decided on this final step, he has shown remarkable constancy of purpose, and that is indicative of stability. Don’t you think so, brother?”

“Yes – and a pretty stiff will, too.”

“True, brother. But Göethe, you know, says the ‘educated will makes the perfect character;’ not that I mean to say that Horace Copley is perfect. Who is? It is incident to humanity to be imperfect. We do not expect young men of fortune to be immaculate; he is not. But there is nothing that is so calculated to restore a young man to a right course, and keep him in it, as a union with a superior woman. A superior woman’s influence is unbounded. Love founded on reason, a deep, fixed love, is – is –”

“A head of steam, no doubt,” interrupted Walter Herbert, who had never before listened so long to his sister-in-law’s congeries of aphorisms; “but if you please, madam, let us talk no more about it. I thank God it is as well as it is!”

“As well!” echoed Mrs Herbert, with spontaneous amazement; “are you not satisfied, brother?”

Mr Herbert threw his half-smoked cigar in the fire, and without any other answer than a short “good night,” he left the lady to speculate upon the insatiable demands of a doting old uncle, and upon other multifarious stumbling blocks in her favorite study of human nature.

It was Mrs Tallis’ habit to give the twilight hour to her child. On the memorable evening of Grace’s betrothal, Elise had lingered longer, and clung closer than usual. Her mother had a sweet voice, and sang old ballads enchanting to the child. She was broken off in the midst of one by a servant bringing in a twisted note, written on a scrap of paper, in pencil, which Copley left as he passed homeward from his betrothal. His eyes were hardly yet dried from the tears he poured over Grace’s hand; his hand was still warm with the pressure of her’s!

“Dear A.,” said the note, “I am engaged to G.H.!!! I shall be here between nine and ten – and am now, and then, and always yours devotedly, H. C.”

There were but two lines, but Mrs Tallis remained standing at the window and reading them, over and over, till her little girl, who had been repeating her entreaties for five minutes, that she would come back and finish her “story song,” said, taking her mother’s hand in both her’s, “Come, do come, mamma – I’ve got a very great pain in my head, and when you sing I don’t feel it.” The mother answered rather instinctively to the magic touch of the little hands than apprehending the words, and again sat down, with the child on her lap, who, laying her head on her mother’s bosom, and her hand on her head, said, “It feels better now, mamma – now sing.” But instead of singing, Mrs Tallis turned the note to the mouldering April fire, and, as if yet incredulous, read it over again. The child snatched it and threw it in the grate, and then, frightened at its own impatience, she burst into a fit of crying. She was of a most quiet temperament, and usually as docile as a dove. The mother’s thoughts were for a moment recalled to the child.

“Why, what ails you, Elise?” she said; “what is the meaning of this?”

“Oh, I don’t know, mamma, what does ail me – my head feels so – and I could not bear the sight of Mr Copley’s old note.”

“Mr Copley’s note! How did you know it was Mr Copley’s note?”

“Why, John said so, when he brought it to you, mamma. I hate his notes, and I hate his presents.”

“What, the beautiful presents he sends you?”

“Yes, I do; and I don’t love him a morsel, and I wish you did not, mamma – I wish you loved papa.” There was a moment’s lull, and then the child resumed: “Mamma, do some ladies love husbands?”

“Some do, I believe,” replied the mother, with a faint smile.

“But you don’t, mamma?”

“I do not! Who told you so, Elise?”

“Nobody told me, mamma – I can tell myself. You love me, mamma; if I am gone out, ever so little way, when I come home you are so glad to see me, and when papa came home from ever so far off, you were not glad to see him; and you always speak kind to me, and you never speak kind to papa.”

“Hush, Elise – you talk too much.”

“Well, I will hush, mamma, if you will just sing me out that pretty story.”

The mother resumed the singing, but her voice soon died away; and when the child again urged her to go on, she said, “I can not sing tonight, Elise. You must go to bed, my child.” She rang for the nurse. The little girl held fast to her, clung most fondly, and when forced away, she said, “Do, mamma, come up and sing me to sleep, my head does really hurt me – horridly – will you, mamma?”

“Yes, yes, I will, you little make-believe.”

But, alas! alas! the mother forgot her promise, and that night, for the first time in Elise’s life, Mrs Tallis went to her own bed, without going to her child’s little couch.

Children are God’s messengers. Woe to the mother whom they do not persuade to rectitude!

On this same memorable evening, Eleanor read, and gave the following note to her husband.

Dear Eleanor:

You will not be surprised to hear that H.C. and I have come to the end of our long and intricate journey. Shall we have a glad welcome from you, and a blessing from my brother?

Esterly glanced his eye over it. “Of course,” he said, “just what I expected.” And then seeing Eleanor dissolved in tears, exclaimed, “My dear child, you are not surprised?”

“No, no – not surprised.”

“Nor disappointed?”

Eleanor shook her head, but not with emphasis.

“Nor dissatisfied?”

“Oh, Frank, can you ask me that?”

“Why, Eleanor, you must have foreseen this inevitable result for the last six weeks, and you have seemed to me to acquiesce in it.”

“Frank, you know how I have been engrossed the last six weeks; and, besides, what could I do? Grace has always been independent, self-directing, not a person to be interfered with.”

“But, Eleanor, it is true I have been lost in my own affairs, but I thought there was a tacit agreement among us to acquiesce in Grace’s decision?”

“And is a mere acquiescence what we should feel at this crisis of our dear, noble sister’s fate?”

“Certainly it is not all we desire to feel, but most marriages, Eleanor, are compromises.”

“Ours was not, Frank.”

“No, but Grace could hardly expect another romance, ripened into a reality, which ours has been,” replied Esterly, kissing his wife with the enthusiasm of a lover; “once I did hope for its parallel for Grace. I was impatient for Lisle’s return. I thought ‘propinquity’ only was wanting to combine their destiny, but before he came home, Grace was entangled in this affair – her mind, if not her heart, was preoccupied. It’s a failure I confess, but after all, not so bad. Think how long Copley has been steadily devoted to Grace – that augurs well.”

“I know him better than you do, Frank. Pride had more to do with his devotion, than love.”

“All men are made of mixed elements, Eleanor. I trust you do Copley injustice.”

“No, no, Frank, I do not. He is false. Anne Carlton has confided to me his insidious flattery to her. I believe the silly girl was half hoping he would offer himself to her; but far worse than that, he has, up to last week, kept up his intimacy with Mrs Tallis, and in her husband’s absence has been every day at her house – so Mrs Milnor, who lives opposite, told me. She says his French valet is every morning at Mrs Tallis’ door with bouquets, and perfumed notes.”

“‘Perfumed!’ Does Mrs Milnor nose them across the street? I wonder, Eleanor, that you should listen for a moment to such an audacious gossip – an unclean bird that lives on carrion.” Esterly, like most men, would scarcely have taken a gossip’s word against a murderer. “I hear much good of Copley,” he resumed, “of late. He has become a teacher in our Sunday School.”

“I am sorry to hear it. I have no opinion of religious cloaks over moral delinquencies.”

“But, Eleanor, he may have thrown off the polluted garments, and not covered them. Give him his due – have you forgotten Violet’s free papers?”

“Certainly not, Frank; but, doubtless, Grace incited him to that good deed.”

“And will to other deeds as good. Come, come, Eleanor, think what power she will have; what a fortune to dispense; what a wide influence! Look on the bright side. Grace’s fate may be next best to ours.”

“Next best! Ah, Frank, you do not know Grace, if you think a ‘next best’ in marriage would be endurable to her. No, she will have nothing, if not a love and confidence like ours – ever growing; our smallest joy, and our keenest sorrow binding us closer together; a mutual dependence, and an individual freedom springing from reciprocal faith, love, and charity; each a life apart, and a life together.”

“Why, Ellen! what a fine theory of marriage.”

“A theory evolved from our experience, Frank.”

“True, my blessed wife; but ours is the fate of but one pair in a thousand; we must take life as it is.”

“Should we not rather, Frank, try to make it what it should be?”

“An odd question to put to a preacher by profession. But, truly, Eleanor, how is this matter to be reformed, unless, as Dr Johnson proposes, we leave it to the chancellor to couple men and women. Marriage is one of the merest chances of life, the most difficult and painful of all social problems. Just fancy the extravagance of expecting that the people I tie together should be qualified for the most complex partnership of life.”

“Then, my husband, do not lend your voice to the general vulgar view of life, and say, ‘A woman must be married.’ Surely it is better she should be a lonely struggler, an ‘old maid’ driven into corners, than to sacrifice her truth, to live in the closest and dearest relation of life, stripped of all that makes life dear. Better utter isolation and desertion, than to perjure herself by a vow of love, honor, and obedience, that she can not keep.”

“I agree with you, theoretically, Eleanor, but practically what is to be done? Do you know a woman who would live single, if she could help it?”

“Yes, indeed, Frank, and so do you. Noble women who have preferred single life to making hollow vows; poverty, if you will have it so, to failure.”

“But these are exceptional cases, my dear.”

“So they are, but there would be many more, if women were true to themselves, and true to their own sex. Many a woman, when she gets a husband, looks upon herself as a general who has won the battle, and may sleep upon his laurels for the rest of his life, and she looks down upon her single sisters from her matrimonial height. The first practical lesson she teaches her daughters is, that an ‘old maid’ is an impersonation of whimsicalities, at best to be pitied, and that her condition is, at all risks, to be avoided. All vulgar men speak of single women with scorn or pity, and such men as you, Frank, are reconciled to such marriages as my sister’s will be, because – ‘she must be married!’”

“Well, since you drive me to it, I defend my position. It is never wise to run counter to the institutions of Providence. Marriage is the first and greatest of these, the central point, whence all the relations of life radiate, the source of all political and social virtue. The husband and wife are priest and priestess in the temple consecrated and upheld by God himself.”

“And is this temple to be turned into a den of thieves, a market for money-changers, Frank? Is its strength to be impaired and its purity polluted by compromise marriages? You say that marriage is the source of all political and social virtue; and so I believe, and that we must thank the low rate of conjugal virtue, for there being so little of either. And how should conscientious statesmen, pure patriots, honest dealers, faithful children, loving brothers and sisters, and loyal friends spring from marriages, such as they are. The world has made slow progress from this starting point, Frank.”

“My dear wife, I believe you have the right, but if you had ever undertaken one social reform, you would know how hopeless is change of the very form and pressure of society.”

“But remember, Frank, the mouse and the lion in the fable. The weakest may do something by using their small power in the right direction. Women’s testimony does not go very far, but do you, Frank, and other accepted teachers, teach my doctrine in simplicity and godly sincerity. Don’t go on in the common rut and multiply these miserable matings (not unions), by saying ‘women must be married.’ If a woman misses her highest destiny, if she can not fold her heart in the bands of conjugal affection, fortified by congenial education, taste, and disposition, if she can not vitalize her union with a religious sentiment, then for pity’s sake, dear Frank, counsel her to try ‘that other fate.’ Teach her that she can prepare her soul for its eternal destiny without marriage – that she can be sister, friend, and benefactor; and that to do her duty within the wide compass of these relations, is far more honorable in the judgment of man, than to be a mismated wife and incompetent mother, condemned to stagnation instead of progress, and finding the last only and miserable consolation in the resignation to an indissoluble tie!”

This long conversation begun at home, was finished on their way to Grace’s. Late as it was in the evening, they both felt a desire to shelter their lukewarmness by their promptness. They were just at Mrs Herbert’s door when Eleanor ended her last sentence: men, the most earnest, the most serious, do not regard marriage with the solemnity that a thoughtful woman does. A woman casts all on that venture; a man has other argosies at sea.

“It is a little odd, Eleanor,” said Esterly, half smiling, “that you have bestowed no part of this lecture upon Grace, and that here we are on our way to congratulate her.”

“Oh, I know I was cowardly,” said Eleanor; “I now reproach myself bitterly, but till very lately I thought that Grace could not be dragged into this maëlstrom.”

“Well, well, my dear child, now do the next wisest thing, and since you can not prevent this marriage, make the best of it.”

The sisters met with tearful smiles. The common phrases of the occasion were spoken, so beautiful when, bearing the soul’s impress, they drop from the heart like fresh coin from the mint and ring like true metal. Grace was not radiant, but there was a certain satisfaction evident, such as one feels who has struggled through an entangled path and comes out on a clear road. But how far was this from the feeling befitting such an occasion.

“A content so absolute,

That not another comfort like to this

Succeeds in unknown fate!”

When Mr Herbert broke away from Grace after that breakfast which was only a fast, he directed his course towards the sole light that glimmered through the darkness closing around him. And after reaching and mounting a long stairway in Wall Street, and passing through a large office, he went on by virtue of his general passport, into a little den where Lisle took refuge from suitors and clerks. Here the old friend was admitted when the rest of the world was shut out. Here he had lounged through many a pleasant hour, and placing no guard over his heart, and little upon his tongue, he had rashly intimated what he most desired, and freely told what most of all things he deprecated. His love for the young man seemed even to himself so out of bound, that at parting he often quoted Falstaff’s words, saying, “Ah, Archy, you have given me medicines!” But alas! poor old man, he was in no laughing vein now. He found Lisle arranging his affairs for his departure with Letty Alsop’s remains for the home burial. He sprang forward to give his friend his usual cordial welcome. Walter Herbert turned away, his face full of struggling feeling, and stood by a window, gazing down into a little dark court, but seeing only the desolate chambers of his own mind.

“What has happened?” said Lisle affectionately, laying his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “What is the matter, sir?”

“Matter!” He turned round as if wound up to a pitch of fierceness, and then like an angry child melting into tears, he said in a broken voice, “Nothing but what should have been expected – she’s gone, Lisle.”

“Gone! dead – who?”

“Oh, no, not dead, but lost for ever to me, and to you. Grace, my darling is – is – engaged!”

No further question was put, no word spoken; each understood the other perfectly. The young man turned white as the unwritten paper on his desk; and after Walter Herbert left him, he sat as if paralyzed for half an hour; then giving his clerks their instructions, he shut himself up till the hour of his departure. He tried to master himself, but Letty was dead, and Grace worse than dead, and the world was very dark to him.

After fulfilling his engagement with Mrs Tallis on the evening of his betrothal, Copley returned to his mother’s house. He passed the drawing room from which the punctual lady had retired at her stated time, and went to his own sitting room, where he found Sam Belson awaiting him, and the floodgates being open, he did not shut them.

“Why, bless my soul!” exclaimed Belson, throwing his unfinished cigar away, “what dead earnest you seem to be in.”

“I am earnest and triumphant. You know, Sam, I have been pursuing this one object for years.”

Belson laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and replied, “Yes, so you have, Cope, with some pleasant little détours; you are capital, Copley.”

“Capital! why, what do you mean?”

“Nothing, nothing, I assure you; I am only amused to see you as much elated as if you had conquered a kingdom.”

“I have – my kingdom.”

“Not by the knights Valor and Love, though you seem to say so.”

“I do say so; and what can you say to the contrary?”

“Pshaw! Cope, don’t fire up; that is not your cue. Why, did you ever suppose after you minded the fortress with that lawsuit, that it would not yield? You remember I told you that was a masterly tactic.”

“You have misunderstood me; upon my honor you have, Sam,” said Copley, reddening; “and certainly you do not know Miss Herbert.”

“Nor ever shall. The lady once refused to permit me to be introduced to her. I shall not ask the favor a second time, though since that memorable epoch, she has stooped from her pride of place. They are devilish poor, I hear. She ought to overlook my foibles, being near of kin to yours.”

“As to that, Sam, Miss Herbert is like other women, comme il faut. They do not know, or care, or think about such matters. But if you imagine she has been governed by a sordid motive, your judgment may be the natural result of your own experience, but I assure you, it is a false one.”

Belson looked askance at Copley with an indescribable leer of derision, and Copley, maintaining his seriousness, and betraying a sincere indignation, which his faith in Grace inspired, Belson said, “Come, come, Copley, don’t let us fall out now; I thought you had got beyond woman-worship. Upon my word, I meant no special disrespect to Miss Herbert; I only do not imagine she is an exception to the sex. Show me a disinterested patriot among politicians, a parson who preaches for the pure love of souls, a just merchant, and I will show you a woman who has no price. Pshaw! Copley, they can all be bought: you know it. A poor girl, ever so innocent – like young Jessie – with a few baubles, and soft words, and fine dresses; Tallis’ wife, with a little larger amount of the same coin; the mass of them, with a trousseau, a nuptial ceremony, and an establishment; and a reduced gentlewoman, be she ever so well born, clever, and accomplished – and your affiancée is all this – will let herself be knocked off to the bid of half a million, and the mirror of all the Graces into the bargain,” and Belson bowed low to Copley as he finished.

The poisoned chalice was returned to Copley’s lips. He was silent.

“Good night to you, Copley,” resumed Belson, after a long pause. “I am going West. You need not ask me to the wedding. I never countenance weddings or funerals. But after this is over, the wedding I mean, we may take up life together, and yet spin some glittering threads. Good night, pleasant dreams to you – dreams a month long, and then awake to married life with what appetite you may. Good night!”

This was said much in the temper and voice of the first nuptial greeting to the first pair:

“Live while ye may,

Yet happy pair: enjoy, till I return,

Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed.”

Chapter 27

“Now, Truth, perform thine office!”

Grace had eagerly escaped from Mrs Herbert’s forced politeness, Miss Anne’s sulkiness, and, above all, from her dear uncle’s pathetic countenance, and passed the interim of her lover’s absence with her sister at Harlem; where, in her obscure dwelling, she realized that home is made of a woman’s heart, and its various relations and dependencies – not of marble, or brick and mortar, or even of May’s magical “wood painted white.” She came to town with her sister and brother-in-law on the day of her lover’s expected return. They were sitting with Mrs Herbert’s family around her tea table. If there was ever an hour in life when Mrs Herbert’s platitudes could be acceptable, it was such a one as this, when everyone else was kept silent by suspended or disquieted feeling and fluttering expectation. Mrs Herbert herself seemed flooded with serenity, as if neither “crosses nor losses” had ever invaded her lot.

“How much we miss you, dear Eleanor,” she said, “and the children, dear little ones. But you must find being in the country a great saving of time – life seems so cut up, so very short in town; don’t you think so, Mr Esterly?”

“I don’t know, madam; reckoned in poor Charles Lamb’s fanciful mode, by the waste of it, it should seem fearfully long.”

“Long or short,” interposed Miss Carlton, “there is not half enough of it to do what one wishes. Mamma and I have been trying so hard, dear Eleanor, every day to get out to see you in your dear little cottage, but something always chances to prevent us – it is so tiresome.”

“‘Lord have macy on fine ladies for all the lies they tell,’ as poor old Di’ says,” whispered Uncle Walter to Grace, who sat at his side. “Now, just listen to Eleanor’s answer, it will be gracious, and true, too, I’ll be bound.” But before the answer was finished, a carriage stopped at the door, the doorbell rang, an ominous silence heralded the expected guest, and Mr Copley entered. It was his first appearance since the engagement. Mrs Herbert and Anne had had time to prepare their masks; the rest never wore them.

The blood rushed to Grace’s cheeks as her lover kissed the hand she extended to him. Eleanor, too, gave him her hand, but, truth itself, she spoke not a word. He looked in her face, and no doubt his vanity interpreted satisfactorily the emotion it expressed. Esterly looked grave. After exchanging the common civilities of meeting, he felt that something more was expected, and he said, “I congratulate you, Mr Copley; my wife is perfection – and Grace is her sister.”

“A little equivocal,” interposed Mrs Herbert; “no doubt Mr Esterly means that our dear Grace will go on to perfection now that she is to be so fortunate, so happy. I hold that success is as propitious to the character as – as –”

“Sugar plums to children, mamma. By the way, Mr Copley,” added Miss Anne, “though you did not give all yours to Grace – your sugar plums, I mean – I was not quite so blind as you may imagine. I have seen all along that the farce of ‘Love’s a riddle’ was to end in this charming way.”

Grace turned her eye upon Anne Carlton; its flash disclosed the hollowness of that vessel; she paled under it, and was silent.

Walter Herbert sat sipping his tea, not moving or even looking up. Grace put her hand on his shoulder, and said, in a low accent that meant more than met the ear, “Uncle Walter.”

He started to his feet, and offered his reluctant hand to Copley. “Excuse me, Mr Copley,” he said, “excuse me; I make it a rule never to congratulate people, till they have been married half a score of years.”

“Then, sir,” replied Copley, with an animation that mollified Mr Herbert, “at the end of ten years I will be sure to claim my dues, with interest.”

“Come, sit down, Mr Copley,” said Mrs Herbert, “here, near me; you can’t do better, since brother and Mr Esterly have placed Grace a prisoner between them – very wrong, gentlemen! I hope you observe, Mr Copley, that I have endeavored to do honor to the occasion – to dress my tea table en pleine toilette. You see John has served my best china, and the bouquet was expressly ordered for your welcome; Thorburn has really done his best.”

“‘There’s rhue for me’ – do you see it?” whispered Anne to Copley.

“You observe,” resumed Mrs Herbert, “the silver vase that contains the flowers, is something quite out of the common way. I keep it locked, you know, Eleanor, in my silver safe – it’s so precious. It was your poor father’s gift to me on our wedding day; and now, dear Grace, I present it to you as a pleasant souvenir of your poor father’s bridal.”

Grace tried to speak decent thanks, but the words died on her lips. Anne, whose eyes on some occasions were as quick as a detective policeman’s, saw her embarrassment, and smiled.

“What are you smiling at, Anne?” asked her mother. “Anne has been so happy since this event.”

“Nonsense, mamma; such ‘events’ to other people don’t particularly delight me.” Anne turned her eye to Copley, and heaved an honest sigh.

“What did you then smile at, my dear?”

“I have forgotten; it might be Mr Copley’s elaborate toilet after his railroad journey. What did we hear at the play about an ‘hour’s delay in love?’”

Miss Carlton’s poor spite passed unheeded, for at this moment a servant brought in a letter, with a paper parcel carelessly tied, and laid it down before her. “This is not for me, John,” she said, and passed the letter to Grace. “Why, what a direction!” she exclaimed, looking at the parcel – “‘Miss Herbert, Bond Street.’ One would think it was written by a maniac.” Miss Anne partook the very common curiosity to see the inside of a parcel. As if unconsciously, and all the while talking to Eleanor, she fumbled at the carelessly tied string till it came off; the paper opened, and the contents rolled on the floor: fans, rings, bits of fantastical jewelry, a splendid opera glass, a certain delicately carved cigarette case, and a diamond bracelet.

Walter Herbert moved back his chair. “Hallo! what’s all this?” he exclaimed.

“Dear me,” cried Mrs Herbert, “the engagement has got wind. Dear Grace, what a quantity of splendid wedding presents!”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Anne Carlton, picking up the bracelet, and darting her eyes from Grace to Copley, “as I live, Mrs Tallis’ bracelet! What can it mean?”

“God knows!” exclaimed Copley, and perhaps unconscious that he had spoken, he rushed, like a felon from justice, out of the room, and out of the house.

Miss Anne, for once inspired by her mother’s genius, condescended to borrow her aphoristic style, and murmured, with ineffable relief, “‘There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.’”

Eleanor’s eyes were fixed on her sister; her’s had not turned from the letter, which was rustling in her shaking hand. She was blind and deaf to all that was passing around her. Without reading the letter, she had, by a sweeping glance over it, and as if by intuition, comprehended its mission, and refolding it, she left the room. When she came to her own apartment, she felt that her intellects were confused and made incapable by the sudden shock; she paced up and down, till she became calm and quite self-possessed. She then lighted the gas, and sat down to the considerate reading of the letter that follows. It was illegibly written, evidently by snatches, and blotted with tears. To Grace’s sharpened sense every word was clear; to her quickened feeling, every meaning sharp as steel.

It began:

She is dead! – my child, Elise is dead. God’s curse has fallen on me – she is dead – gone from me forever and forever.

I kneel by her hour after hour – the hours are minutes, and the minutes are hours – there is no change. She is still – oh, so still! – this restless little body that at my least look would fly into my arms. I kiss her with my burning lips; they do not warm hers. I take up the little hand that used to grasp mine, and it falls, heavy and cold. My heart throbs till I think life stirs in her, but there is no life there. She is dead – Elise, dead?

She was a sweet fountain in my life desert. She should have kept me from wrongdoing. She did not, and so I lost her – my darling, darling child. I loved her as I have loved nothing else. I never loved my husband. My child loved him. And when I think of that, and look upon her, it does not much comfort me that I have not been criminal toward her father, in the world’s sense. I see written on my spotless child, ‘Blessed are the pure in spirit.’ And I am sure I feel that such as are not so, are cursed.

One ray of light has penetrated my thick darkness. One duty appears before me: it seems as if my child had spoken to me, and that does comfort me, though my head throbs, so that I know not if I can do what I would. I will try.

I have moved away from her. I have dropped the curtain all around her bed, so that I can not see her while I write. I will try to write distinctly. Oh, how could she die? so full she was of life and love.

Stop – let me think. It was that evening my darling first showed signs of this fatal illness. She had been hanging round me all the afternoon, but I think she did not complain till after a note was brought in to me from Copley, informing me of your engagement, and telling me he would come to me in the course of the evening. She was sitting with her arm over my shoulder, and her little cheek resting on my breast. I was singing to her – the last time. I dearly loved to sing to her; how she loved it; how she would ask for ‘more and more.’ I learned every pretty ballad I could hear of, to sing to her. When I had read the note, she begged me to sing more. She said her head did not pain her when I sang. I thought it was just a little pretext, she was so petted. Poor little darling!

I must tell the whole humiliating truth. Copley’s note set me off crying with vexation, and mortified vanity. Not disappointed love; no, no, it was not love; no, I never loved that bad man. My child kissed off my tears, unworthy the touch of her lips; I rang for her nurse. Again Elise told me she had pain. I called her ‘a little make-be-lieve,’ and kissed her, and sent her away. Oh, my God! if I could have her now, but one moment living, in my arms!

Copley came – I will tell all, for so I resolved on my knees by my little angel’s side. His sacrilegious lips touched my cheek, still warm with my child’s caress. I do not remember distinctly much of what he said. Like a dream, it has been all swept away before the dreadful realities that followed. I remember we sat together, and walked the room together, hour after hour. Twice, nurse knocked at the door, and told me Elise was asking for me. I gave no heed; nature was dead within me. God forsook me when I sent my child away.

Oh, yes, now it comes back to me, some things he said that dreadful evening. ‘He must marry, sooner or later.’ He believed his incentive in the pursuit of you had been the difficulty of attaining you. You piqued his pride. He chose to pursue, not to be caught by the ‘eager mothers, and ready daughters,’ and stuff like that. And then, oh, how he flattered me. How he has, from the beginning, talked of my beauty, my grace, my magnetic attraction, my exquisite taste in dress. Think of my folly; think of it – and of my punishment. Oh, my child, my child!

Why did I not leave him, and go to my darling? Had I only gone to her little bed to kiss her, as I went to my room! – it was the first time I ever missed it – it was my sin that kept me from her. Perhaps I might have saved her if I had called the doctor then – that way lies madness. She was awake all night, nurse says, and continually asking her for me; and when they called me in the morning, she was in a fit. Since then she has not known me. She has not felt my kisses. I tried every song she loved, and sang till I fainted quite away, but she gave no heed; God would not let her. She would never have left me of her own free will.

Her father is absent. Poor Rupert! he will never see her, not even as she lies now – dead. Oh, that horrid word, it seems as if I had never heard it, never seen it before. He will be comforted, for he has not offended. He uttered no false marriage vows, nor has he broken them in thought, word, or deed.

Now that I have done this one duty left in the dark world before me, I look on my child with less torture. I seem to have taken one step toward her.

Augusta Tallis

P. S. I send you all the trinkets he has given me. Dispose of them as you will; throw them into the street, if you will, and let these witnesses of my vanity and folly be trodden under foot.

Half an hour after, Eleanor softly opened the door and entered her sister’s room. Grace was kneeling beneath her mother’s picture; it was the place she had fondly chosen, when a child, to say her prayers, and she had retained it for that holy office with something of the feeling of a Catholic in devout communion with her dearest saint; she raised her head. All struggle was over; there was a heavenly peace on her glowing face. “Come here, dear sister,” she said, “and help me thank the beneficent Providence that has saved me from perdition.”

Their arms were interlaced and their hearts melted together in one silent, fervent thanksgiving.

Grace gave Eleanor Mrs Tallis’ letter. She wiped away her tears as she finished the reading. “Poor mother! poor woman!” she murmured, “what can be done for her? She has neither mother, nor sister, nor, I believe, one intimate friend.” Grace impulsively answered to what she felt as an appeal. “Shall I go to her, Eleanor?” she said. “She is alone with her servants. She must need some one who knows her whole calamity. I may come between her soul and its despair – I have been at least as weak as she, and therefore my presence will be no reproach to her.”

“Yes, go, dear Grace, and support and comfort her if you can; but do not silence the reproaches of her conscience; remember in whose name conscience speaks.” Eleanor paused, Grace rang the bell, and bade the servant order a carriage.

“I thought her so weak,” said Grace, “I would not have believed there were elements in her for so fearful a tempest. I am afraid she will lose her senses when it comes to the last.”

“No, Grace, I think not. I think I hear from out the storm that gracious voice, ‘It is I, be not afraid!’”

“What do you mean? I do not understand you, Eleanor.”

“I see in her remorse and in her hard struggle to do the duty nearest to her, that God is dealing with her soul, and that she accepts his dealing.”

“Oh, Eleanor, you are so much more religiously wise than I am, so much wiser every way, that you, not I, should go to her.”

“No, Grace, for every reason it is better you should go. Mrs Tallis must be approached through her feelings. But do not, dear Grace, in your pity and anxiety for her present relief, lose sight of her future good. She receives her child’s death as punishment; her mind is filled with this idea. Make her feel, if you can, that this is not the way that our great Shepherd in his infinite love deals with us. He chastises us, not because we leave the fold, but to make us conscious of our wanderings, to bring us back and keep us there. If the child had lived she would have followed the fashion of her mother’s life; that would have been the real misery. Now the little loving creature’s death may bring her mother out of her idle useless life, may lead to right relations to her husband, to a sincere, effectual repentance. To this great end, you must persuade her the bitter draught the great Physician has put into her hand must be drunk, not turned aside; and that he gives it to restore, not torment.”

“How right you are, Eleanor, and as much better than I, as a cure is than a cordial. I thought only of paying the infinite debt I owe this poor lady, by giving her what comfort I could in her desolation. Now, by your aid, I will be true to her, and try to help as well as comfort her. How different, dear sister,” she said, as she stooped to kiss Eleanor good night, “is this from the sweet peace at your child’s death!”

“Yes, thank God, it is very different; but Grace, that affliction discovered moth and rust gathering on our Christian armor, that we had not perceived.”

“And the angel of death brings in his hand this divine anointing for all our eyes, does he not, Eleanor?” Grace replied with a pensive smile, and as she paused at the door, her face radiant with a sense of her great deliverance, she added, in a low voice, “May I not say devoutly that ‘whereas I was blind, I now see?’”

Once out of the room, she turned back, and in an altered tone said, “Think of my forgetting Uncle Walter! Go to him, Eleanor, tell him I have passed the Dead Sea I have been drifting down the last five days; that I am free and happy, and his own child again; and if he wishes, tell him all how it is – most likely I shall never speak of it again.”

The good news was told to Walter Herbert. It was health to him by day and sleep by night.

At two in the morning, Grace, having withdrawn, from the apartment in which the body of Elise was lying, to Mrs Tallis’ library, wrote the following letter to her sister:

Dear Eleanor:

When I came to this house, I summoned Mrs Tallis’ maid, and inquired for her mistress. ‘Oh, Miss,’ she said, ‘it would scare you to see her. The poor lady has not left the nursery since first the child was taken ill. You can go in, for she takes no notice who goes in or who comes out; she seems to know nothing but that the child is dead. She has swallowed nothing but a sip of tea or coffee; she has not had a brush through her hair, and only takes her bath, and slips on her dressing gown, as if she grudges the minutes she’s away from Miss Elise’s side.’ I stopped her prating, and went, as seemed to me best, directly to Mrs Tallis. Oh, Eleanor, what a spectacle! The last time I saw Augusta Tallis was at Mrs Seton’s ball, splendidly arrayed, brilliantly beautiful! She was now colorless as the little blighted blossom she hung over. Her flesh has melted away; she looks ten years older; and yet, haggard as she is, her hair matted, her dress neglected, her exquisite beauty impressed me as it never did before. It is now instinct with spirit, though the spirit be in prison and in torment. She was kneeling, when I entered, beside her child’s little couch, her head lying on her child’s low pillow. I went to her and laid my hand on her head. She did not notice me. I stood hoping for some sigh or motion – there was none. I turned my eyes to the child – she looks like a sleeping cherub – so serene, so lovely! Thoughts of the salvation she had wrought for me, flooded my heart. I kissed the shining locks on her temples, and murmured something, I know not what, expressions of my debt to her. The mother started, as if from deep sleep and dreams, and said, ‘Who is it? what is it?’ I sank down beside her, and put my arm around her quivering frame. ‘Dear friend,’ I said, ‘I have come to thank you and to bless her – you and your child have saved me, Augusta. She inspired you to write that letter to me.’ I shall never forget the instant change of her countenance – it was from death to life – from despair to hope. ‘I thought it was so,’ she said; ‘she seemed to speak to me out of that death silence – to tell me the only thing left for me to do in this world – and I did it – and I shall see her again; shall I? Oh, tell me you believe I shall! that I am not a castaway!’ I thought of your caution, Eleanor, and resisted my impulse to fold her to my bosom, and say nothing but the balmiest words I could think of. I spoke yours instead. ‘Surely I believe you will see your child again,’ I said, ‘if you faithfully receive the admonition our heavenly Father sends to you through her.’ ‘Oh, tell me what it is,’ she said, ‘my head is so weak, so dizzy. Why, there is nothing left for me in this life to do – it is all empty and dark. My husband must hate me, must cast me off – our child has died by my neglect.’ Now I soothed her, Eleanor; I begged her to be quiet, and to wait, and by-and-by she would see God’s gracious purpose, if she would but look to him – his arms were always outstretched to the returning child. She seemed a little comforted and laid her head on my lap, and the tears flowed with less anguish. But she broke forth again, and wrung her hands and said, ‘Oh, she was not like any other child! she was so sweet! so bright! such a merry laugh – did you ever hear her laugh? Oh, my heavens, I shall never laugh again! And she could be so quiet. When I had my nervous headaches she would lie by me for an hour with her little cool hand on my forehead, and if I but sighed she would kiss me; but she will never kiss me again, never, never!’ By degrees I soothed away this paroxysm, and she permitted me to lay her on the sofa, and bathe her head, and while I stroked her temples, she fell asleep, and slept naturally for an hour, the first time, her woman avers, since the child became ill; but that can hardly be. Ignorant people are apt to express their sympathy by exaggerating the demonstrations of suffering. When Augusta awoke, she took, without resistance, the nourishment I offered. And what was more important, she seemed comforted by my presence, and ready to open her heart to me. She returned to her child’s low couch, and after having sat by her a long time in thoughtful and tearless silence – ‘Oh, Grace,’ she said, ‘I begin to comprehend what you said to me – that God’s dealing with me was supremely wise and loving; was not that what you said? My head has been so confused – it is getting clearer now.’

‘I believe all God’s dealings with us are so,’ I replied.

‘I don’t mean in general, but in particular to me – I see it is so.’ It seemed for a moment as if she struggled to penetrate with the eye of faith the thick clouds that obstructed it, and then again she reverted to the treasure that had absorbed all her love, and giving way to a fresh burst of grief, she said, ‘I was not fit to be trusted with the precious spirit of my child. All I did was to pamper her, and to deck this little body in French finery. I loved her; yes, I loved her. God knows I loved her. But, oh, Grace, meanly, selfishly, wickedly. I could not bear she should love anyone but me. I was jealous of her nurse, and bitterly jealous of her father. I used often to ask her if she did not love me better than she loved her father; and the dear little creature would say, ‘No mamma, I love you both alike; you are good to me, and papa is just as good to me, and I can’t help loving him as well.’ She was so true; she could not say what was not true, and it was wise and loving to take her away before I corrupted her. Oh, am I not humbled? I should have dragged down to earth that sweet heavenly spirit. I should have made her just what I am – a mere victim of vanity, living to no one good purpose. Poor Rupert! what will he say? what will he do? She was all he had in the world. I have done nothing for him, but to wear out of him all the goodness he had. He did love me. He does love me still.’ After a pause, she said, with animation, as if the thought had just struck her, ‘Grace, Grace, do you think it possible that he can ever forgive me, and forget, and be happy again? Do you think it possible that I can love him, because I ought. Is that my child’s admonition?’

I hesitated. She seemed gazing into the very depths of my soul. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you do not believe it possible.’

Now, Eleanor, you may imagine how much I was perplexed what to answer her. You know how I have always maintained against you, whose nature it is to feel as well as to do right – and who, therefore, have it at will to love or not – that love is an instinct, or an impulse, or something quite independent of our will, or our conviction. I tried to think what you would reply to her, Eleanor. I was frightened, lest I should put some obstruction to the good work beginning in her heart, and while I hesitated, she said, ‘I do not believe you know how good Rupert is – how forbearing he has been with me – how much he has overlooked – how dreadfully I have tried him. And yet I think, I hope he still loves me.’

I can not express to you the relief I felt at these words. I could now answer as I wished, without belying my own convictions. I saw the child’s death was working a change in the wife’s heart.

‘The desire for your husband’s affections will turn yours toward him, Augusta. Feeling as you do, this bereavement, you will know what he feels, and from your infinite pity for him, affection must spring up; not a girlish love, but the considerate affection of a steadfast friend; and then she who now seems lost to you will not be lost, but the guardian angel of both.’ Augusta looked at me, while I spoke, with an earnestness I can not describe to you, and when I finished, instead of replying to me by word, she sank on her knees, and bending her head over her child, she held such gracious communion, with Him who had stretched out his arms to receive the returning prodigal, as I think she never knew before.

It was a fitting preparation for what was to follow. Mrs Tallis’ maid opened the door, and beckoning to me, said, ‘Mr Tallis had arrived, and would I please to go down to him? – he was in such an awful way they could do nothing with him.’ No, thought I, if it be possible, his wife shall go to him. Now, while they are baptized in the same affliction, and the same grief, the past may be obliterated. The ice formed against him in her heart is already melting in this fiery crucible – the current may set to him.

Augusta had risen from her knees, and was looking to me. ‘Has he come?’ she gasped out. ‘Yes, Augusta, will you go to him? You alone can comfort him.’ ‘I,’ she said, ‘I comfort him?’ After hesitating a moment, and gazing again at her child, as if from her to draw strength and courage, she said, ‘Yes, I will go. I will tell him all; everything. He may – he may forgive me. Oh, Grace, he has a great heart.’

‘Yes, I believe he has,’ said I, delighted to perceive the subtle workings of her newly awakened feeling for him, ‘and Augusta, such greatness is goodness; trust to it.’

‘I will,’ she replied; and added, with almost a smile beaming through the sweetness of her face, ‘Our child bids me go to him.’

I wrapped a shawl around her, and supported her, shivering and tottering, to his door. He was weeping aloud when she went in. Then followed a fearful stillness. But afterward, here in the library, where I am sitting, over the drawing room, I heard the murmur of their low, sad voices for half an hour. I doubt not there was humble and full confession from her, and forgiveness from him. Then they came up to Elise’ nursery together, and the maid now tells me, that Mr Tallis has gone, quite calm, to his own apartment, and she is falling asleep on the sofa. Oh, Eleanor, if he has lost his child, has he not found his wife?

This is the second time that I have been so near to death as to penetrate with a sort of second sight its mysteries. When our mother died, I was too young for anything but the dreadful sense of loss. Aunt Sarah told me she was gone to heaven, but what heaven was, or where, I knew not. She was gone from me forever; that I fully comprehended, and night after night I cried myself to sleep. But never, till I saw you and Frank meekly resign your child into the safe wardship of Him who gave him, did I know that the gates of immortality are never again closed to those whose eye of faith has seen one they loved pass through them. Thenceforth, this life has an unction from the life to come.

And to this house death has come as an angel, sowing with light and life the paths of these poor wanderers befogged by their own follies. And it has an angel’s mission to all those for whom it sets its solemn seal and superscription on vanity, and levity, and worldliness, and all the utter waste of God’s good gifts.

But, dear sister, in pointing the moral for others, I do not evade it for myself. This evening has been what your good little cousin Effie calls ‘a teaching period,’ and I have had my own humbling task to con.

Eleanor, when you prescribed the medicine for Mrs Tallis, you meant there should be enough for two. I have drank my portion, and now I send you the result; please examine it, dear physician, and tell me if it be right.

The blow to my vanity this evening was stunning, but my affections are unscathed. This is certain from my present satisfaction, and grateful sense of escape. If I had loved Horace Copley, blinded, beguiled, I might have been, but then I should have found extenuation in my delusion. Now, in my retrospect, I see how my weakness yielded to his stronger will, how his importunate flattery filled the vacuities of my life, and bribed my imagination to supply the defects in his character; obvious enough they were to my judgment, and glaring to my instincts. I certainly did not dream of such heartless profligacy as Mrs Tallis’ disclosure revealed; but at twenty-two, I should have reflected on what was meant by that term, ‘man of the world,’ which I have more than once heard applied to him, and I ought to have reasoned far enough to conclude that a man, false in his relations to our sex, is unsound, is false throughout, and that his integrity is not to be trusted when assailed by temptation, come in what form it may.

This man has been a sort of possession to me. What hours, hours! years of precious responsible life I have wasted on him. I now dismiss him from my mind forever, and truly without resentment or contempt; he has exercised too much power over me for contempt, and for resentment, Eleanor, my self-abasement is too deep, my penitence too keen, to permit resentment. You are my confessor, dear sister. Every sound is hushed within and without. The city is steeped in solemn silence. I feel like making a clean breast of it, so have patience. I begin with a confession that makes my cheeks burn, while I write it. I was, no, I was not jealous of Anne Carlton, but the thought that she might finally triumph over me, would intrude, and I could not brook it. I looked forward with pleasure to baffling Mrs Herbert’s manoeuvring. I will keep the memory of those miserable vanities as a scourge for all future intrusions of this subtle weakness, which like the fretting worm works into the very root of virtue. Don’t tell your husband, Eleanor; I am not humbled enough for that. To you alone, who are so good, so ‘lowly-wise,’ and to my God can I confess this most humiliating weakness.

I have gifts that compel the world to admire me, and make Anne Carlton, and birds of her feather, hate me – it would be mock-modesty to deny it – and other gifts that make you and Frank, and my dear Uncle Walter, love me; but what use have I made of them, Eleanor? I have been one of the veriest idlers in that wide harvest field, where the laborers are few and the harvest still plenteous. I have made myself my own centre; I have studied art and literature as ends, not means; I have fretted in the harness of the frivolous society in which my lot was cast, but I have not thrown it off; I craved, and expected – as I believe most young women do – an adoring, exclusive love, as if we came into this working world merely to worship idols, and be idols in turn; in short, Eleanor, amid my morbid repinings, and insolent exactions of Providence, I sought for peace everywhere but where it is to be found, and where, being found, all pure human affections, all gifts and graces, all diversities of attainments, are its gracious accessories, never its substitutes.

I have looked upon you, sweet sister, wrapped in your humility, and going through the paths of duty heavenward, as my inferior, because you had not my longings – aspirations, I think I called them in my nomenclature. The steeps I climbed were as the mere molehills on earth’s surface, while your way led up those shining heights seen only by the eye of faith. You, Eleanor, have been like sunshine in your course, imparting vitality to everything you touched; even the few possible virtues in our stepmother and in Anne Carlton have put forth and blossomed in your beams; whereas I have been the sphynx, with its riddle, to them, and they, heaven knows, a desert to me.

I lay some trifling unction to my soul from the fact that your plastic youth was moulded by our martyr-aunt, while my willful and wayward childhood was left to the corrosions of Mrs Herbert, and dear Uncle Walter’s petting, which nurtured my affections, and thereby brought forth some flowers, but certainly had no tendency to root out the weeds.

But these are accidents; the difference between us is essential. You have been a Christian, and lived a Christian’s life; I have been a heathen, and lived a heathen’s life. I know the inscription is the same to us both – all those who are baptized, and have conformed to the rule of their church, as I have to ours, are called Christians, as I am called; but I also know, that those only are so who hear His word and do it.

Dear sister, I have had a long life in this solemn night, if time is to be reckoned by sensations. I have laid the cross upon my heart, and comprehended, as I never did before, this symbol of humility, love, and fidelity.

I am penitent, Eleanor. Time must prove whether I am repentant.

The following passage from a recent publication seems to us of so apt an application to Grace Herbert’s letter, that we take the liberty to enrich our pages with it:

Have you, reader, ever experienced a great sorrow? and if so, have you not seen afterward how it discloses heights and depths in your spiritual nature which you had never known, and resources upon which you had never drawn; how it produces susceptibilities which you had never before felt; how it induces a tenderness of mind that makes it ductile almost as the clay, and ready to receive the stamp of the divine image; how little animosities and hatreds are banished and forgotten, while the heart has new yearnings toward all that live, and especially toward all that suffer; how the soul sickens at mere shows and appearances, and demands realities, while it hungers after the good and the true; how this world recedes less, while the world of immortality comes on as if now first revealed, and encloses you in its light, just as when the glare of the day is withdrawn and the darkness moves over us, we gaze on a new sky, and bathe in the starry splendors of the milky way?

Chapter 28

“Affection warm, and faith sincere,

And soft humanity were there.”

It was just at the close of day, a soft, showery April day, that the body which had invested Letty’s sweet spirit was let softly down into its mother earth. The sun sent its slanting beams athwart the turf, jeweled by the shower, and checkered by the shadows of an old oak that spread its arms, as if in benediction, over the space allotted in the village churchyard to the Lisle family.

The friends that had gathered to assist in the last reverential office had dispersed. Archibald alone lingered, leaning against a marble slab which marked his father’s grave, and near which Letty was placed.

We said he was alone; but not far from him stood the village sexton, leaning on his spade. The old man’s few white hairs, curiously husbanded and braided, lay in a single lock on his forehead, making him look like the fit chief craftsman of “Time in the primmer.” “Uncle Phil” was the most venerated official of the village – his dynasty had been the longest. He had buried two generations, and turned into the dust some sweet blossoms of the third. Uncle Phil’s hands were thus hallowed. Besides, in his private life, he was a single, kindly, true-hearted man, with a quaint humor that pleased the old, and drew the children to his knee. A touch of human vanity he had, but it ran in the professional line, and thus interfered with no one, and offended none. He was proud to be the ultimate authority in all the traditions of the burying-place, which he seemed to regard in some sort his private estate. He boasted that there was not an error in the records of his memory; that he could name each individual that mouldered in an unmarked grave; that he could tell the day and the hour when such and such a grave was dug; who had the longest procession; who was buried in the pomp of “mahogany and silver plate,” and who was laid down in humble “cherry.” These, and other analogous ghastly particulars, were as familiar as household words to Uncle Phil, but they never clouded his serene mind. Life was pleasant to him from sunrise to sunset – from the morning of youth, to the twilight of old age.

Archibald was wiping the tears from his eyes, and turning to depart, when an expressive “hem, hem,” from Uncle Phil arrested him.

“Ah, Archy,” he said, hobbling forward as fast as age and rheumatism would let him, and grasping the young man’s hand, “I declare I’m glad to see you, tho’ it’s a kind o’ solitary time with you. She was pretty” – in our rustic phrase, the most comprehensive of commendations – “it comes tough to me, Archy, to lay down such a young, kind creature as Letty Alsop was; but I guess she’s better off – she was sort o’ lonesome in this world.” Solitary, and lonesome, in Uncle Phil’s social vocabulary, stood for all modes of wretchedness and uncomfortableness.

“Yes, Uncle Phil,” replied Archy, “she is far better off, in every way;” and then, characteristically closing the door on his own griefs, he added, “I am very glad to see you able to be out after your great loss; I was very sorry to hear of it, Uncle Phil.”

“I knew you would be, Archy. Gorry! ’twas hard. She was the only one we ever had. Her mother had not been dead but little more ’n a year, and Livy and I had lived together sixty years, three months, and seven days. She was the peaceablest creter – lively as a cricket, too – and a masterhand for work; no noise about it; and neat as a Shaker! Sixty years we saw the sun rise and set together – never apart one night in that time. Sixty years! It’s a long day, Archy; but ’twas pleasurant, I tell you.” The old man paused, still leaning on his spade, and then went on to the second chapter of his life: “But an only child is choice, Archy – you was a speaking of Anny? Well, she ’s gone, too! We wa’n’t neither of us none of the youngest when Anny was born. She was all of thirty, and I was upwards. Anny was a comfort all the way through; she was good – she was, Archy; but after her mother died, I never see no creter so lonesome as she was. It was ‘Mother! mother!’ all the time; and when the typhus fever set in, I couldn’t say a word – she was going to mother, and I could best bear being left alone. My spirit is a kind o’ rising one, you know, Archy; but it was a hard stroke parting.” The poor old man, with a nature all abhorrent of sadness as it was, bit his lips, and fairly whimpered.

“It is very wretched, Uncle Phil, that you should be left alone.”

“Oh, gorry! Archy, I ain’t alone; that is, Ned Finley’s family has moved in to t’other part of the house, and they ’re good company, ’specially their boy Jemmy. Says he to me t’other day, when my rheumatis was at its height, and I could not put on my shoes, says he, ‘Come, Uncle Phil, come to dancing school with me, and it will cure you.’ He’s a bright one.” And the old man, who had glided into sunshine as eagerly as a lizard does, laughed, and went on: “I always liked boys, you know, Archy; you and I was always friends, you remember?”

“Oh, I can never forget it, Uncle Phil, how kind you always were to me – the mammoth melon you gave me, and my pleasant rides in your old wagon. Is old Whitey alive?”

“Whitey! Landsakes! Archy. Whitey died twenty years ago, and he was upwards of twenty-two! I was not thinking, Archy, of our little sprees in the old wagon, and so forth, but of your ploughing; do you remember it?” Uncle Phil proceeded to relate what he repeated circumstantially at his semi-annual meetings with Archibald, for he never went home without paying the old man a visit. “You remember, don’t you, Archy, when we raised that noble bit of corn that took the premium – before you went into larning? You was but a slip of a boy, but you was one of them kind that succeeds. Gorry! there’s a difference in boys, that’s a fact. When you took the ten dollars instead of the silver cup, Deacon Shay’s wife said ‘she thought it a bad sign for a boy to be so greedy of cash.’ I tell you, Archy, I had my revenge when I went to settle with her for burying the deacon. The old lady disputed my price – you know the deacon was tall as Saul, and I had to dig extra length. Well, I told her, twice over, how you would have me take the ten dollars, ’case you would have it the yield was owing to my ploughing – you remember?”

“You will not let me forget, Uncle Phil, though it is so long past; even then you seemed to me an old man.”

“’Case you was a boy, Archy. Why, it ain’t much over twenty years, and I was not much past sixty then – but old age has come on me like a snowstorm since she and Anny died.”

“Still, I see you are able to keep up your old business?”

“Well, yes, with some help. Since railroads came in, Archy, people are running wild with notions. They must carry new fashions into graveyards, and turn ’em into cimetaries, and there ’s a sight to do! But come here, Archy, and see where I laid my folks.” Archibald followed him. “There,” he continued, after a slight pause, “there they lie together, side by side, as close as we could put them. I always meant to lie by her, but Anny went first, and I gave up to her. I knew she ’d want to lie close to ‘mother’ – so she’ll lie between us. Now, isn’t that sleek, Archy?” he pointed to the smooth, rich turf over his wife and child. “I spare no pains here,” and he stooped to pluck out the only weed visible, “it’s all I can do for them now; the ladies put up this monument – it was kind of them, but I guess father’s work pleases them that lies under better – foolish, they don’t know nothing about it.” And our poor “Old Mortality” dashed off the tears that seemed to sting him.

“Oh I think they do, Uncle Phil; not from ‘under,’ as you say, but I believe they are looking down upon you, lovingly, gratefully.”

“Gorry! do you, Archy? do you? Well, maybe they are.”

Uncle Phil’s garrulity did not tire Archy, to whom he was much endeared by the pleasant memories of his boyhood, but anxious lest the falling dew should harm his stiffened joints, he told him so, and proposed they should go homeward. “Oh, never fear, Archy. I never humor my rheumatis – there ’s no use. I want you just to notice your plot. You were too much cut down at the funeral. The trees you planted thrive finely. I have my favorites below, as others have above ground. You can pick them out by the look of their graves; no nettles where your people lie, I can tell you.”

They turned their footsteps towards the fresh grave, and having examined the young trees which encircled the sacred precincts of his family, and commended them, Archibald, for the first time in his life, noticed a grave beside his mother’s, the turf of which was very slightly elevated above the surrounding level. It had a small brown headstone. “Whose grave is this, so close to my mother’s, can you tell me, Uncle Phil?” he said.

“Tell you, Archy? I guess I can,” replied the old man, chuckling. “Why, since they’ve been modeling-over the yard, I’ve ’dentified more than forty graves that had no name on ’arth, but what’s in my mind – there’s not many folks remembered long after they come under my spade. I was puzzled myself sometimes, but then I’d call to mind the shape of the coffin, the kind of wood, and sometimes, Archy, the look of a mourner would come up fresh, and bring it all back. But that little grave – landsakes, Archy! to think you should not know about that.”

“I do not,” said Archibald, his feelings startled by the old man’s emphasis and by his face full of meaning.

“Why, Archy, that’s Helen Dale’s grave – your aunt.”

“Helen Dale! my aunt? I never heard the name before. I never knew I had an aunt.”

“Why, you don’t mean so, Archy!” and the old man bent over his spade, and gazed at Archy in a sort of bewilderment. After a moment’s pause, he said, “Well, maybe it is not so strange. Come to think, she must have died about the time you were born – a little before, or may be a little after; and your own mother, Archy, was – was – was – was not like other folks. That is all I mean, Archy – no disrespect – for she was a noble disposition of a woman, and your mother besides; but she was the shut-uppest woman that ever I came across. ‘Deeds, not words,’ with her; but the last comer, that is the present Mrs Lisle, has made up for it. Gorry! her tongue is set in the middle, and runs at both ends.”

“Still,” said Archibald, reflecting more than listening, “I wonder my father never mentioned my aunt to me.”

“Well, he was rather of a still man too, Archy; and the last woman was so breezy, he could scarce hear his own quiet voice. No; it’s not strange, you was not over eight when your own mother died, and Helen Dale was only your aunt, and your mother pined inwardly; she was inclining to stern too, your mother. But come, let’s be going toward home.”

“I do not remember,” said Archibald, following, after he had given one last, loving, lingering look to the sods that covered poor Letty, “I do not remember that my mother was stern.”

“Well not to you, Archy, nor to Helen Dale. She was more child than sister to your mother – ten or twelve years between them; and Helen was the apple of her eye, the meekest, mindingest little creter; she was pretty! Your mother was married so long before you was born, that no one mistrusted she would ever have a child, and Helen was all in all to her. And your mother was ambitious, she knew a’most everything. She had been a teacher, you know, and folks thought she over-teached Helen. She grew up as white as a water lily – a real beauty, and her eyes just a pretty match for yours; she did not seem made out of common clay, Archy, she did not. She went away that spring before she died, to the seashore for her health. When she first came home, she looked chirp, but she soon ran down, and went as consumptive folks mostly do, at the fall of the leaf. It was just after you were born, and your mother would have the coffin brought up in her room where she was lying, and you, a little black-looking fellow along side of her. We placed the coffin across the table that stood under the glass, so that the head came close to your mother’s pillow, and she raised up in the bed and told us to put back the lid. Helen made the beautifullest corpse I ever saw. She had long, light, shining hair, like yours, Archy, when you was a boy; and ’twas parted off her forehead, and brought down each side on her shoulders, in a clump of kind o’ wavy curls. Your mother would not have a cap put on her, nor a shroud on, but her own white dress with a narrow ruffle, showing just the pretty modest part of her neck; she looked like a child asleep; she was not much past sixteen; her eyelids laid quiet down just as if she was dreaming something pleasant, and her long eyelashes soft and black, seemed to stir when you looked at her. She was a pictur to look at, I tell you, Archy.”

“But my mother, Uncle Phil?”

“Well, I was going to tell you. Your mother was a different make from Helen: a tall, strong-build, but she was dreadful took down. She did not seem to know what she was about; she took you up in her arms and held you on the pillow as if you could see into the coffin, and knew ’twas your aunt, and so forth; your poor little head lopped one side and t’other, and what did you take in? and then she put you back and ris’ up in bed, and laid her arms on the coffin, and her head went quite down in, and I saw her neck swelled as if it would burst, and the veins along her temples, and not a word she spoke, nor a tear she shed; and I knew all this was resky to a woman in her situation, and that she had ought to live for the sake of her baby – that’s you, Archy; so says I, ‘Mis’ Lisle, ma’am, this won’t do,’ and I takes her by the shoulders, and lays her down, and she threw the bedclothes over her head, and I called help, and we brought down the coffin and set it under the old elm tree in the yard, and they had the prayer there, and there was no dry eyes, I tell you, Archy. I kind o’ shuddered when I laid the sods over her; so young – sixteen and seven months – and so pretty, Archy,” concluded the old man, with a sigh.

Archy was infected by the sexton’s vivid recollections; he, too, shuddered. After a moment’s silence he asked Uncle Phil if he could tell him no more of his mother.

“Well, not much, Archy. Before this time she’d been a dreadful ambitious woman. Everything of Mis’ Lisle’s was better than the neighbors had, and all her make. But after Helen died, she seemed to give up the world pretty much; they said Mis’ Lisle’s butter and cheese wa’n’t better than other folks’. She seemed not to care much for anything but you; not but what she did her duty as a wife, but her heart was half in Helen’s grave, and t’other half you had.”

“I remember her,” said Archy, “as pale, and thin, and sad, and it seems to me she was a long time ill.”

“A failing? yes, Archy, she was. The very last time she was out, was the summer Deacon Shay died. She was at the funeral; I obsarved she did not go out with the procession, and I was sleecking off the deacon’s grave. She beckoned to me; she was a standing at Helen’s headstone. Since Helen’s burial a good many of your father’s relations had dropped off, and she was kind o’ hedged in among ’em; and so says your mother, says she, ‘Uncle Phil, you must bury me under that oak tree yonder, and mind when you do it, that you take up my sister’s coffin, and place her close beside me, and move this headstone.’ ‘I shall do it, ma’am,’ says I; and I did it, Archy, no mistake. Your mother died, and was buried that following September, and the next day I moved Helen; and now comes something remarkable: She’d lain eight years bating fifteen days, and she looked just precisely as she did the day I put her down, not a hair moved, not a shade changed, even the little white plaited muslin ruffle round her neck laid just as pretty. I’ve seen a great deal in our old graveyard, but never the like o’ that.”

They had now reached the gate that led to the sexton’s dwelling. “Well, goodbye, Archy,” he said, returning the cordial grasp of his young friend’s hand. “I’ve had a pleasant time with you, though it’s a solitary business that brings you here. One thing, Archy, no offence. I took kind o’ comfort in putting Letty down a side of Helen; young folks together, you know; it seems sort o’ company for them.”

“Uncle Phil!”

“Well, Archy, you can’t, I see, enter into my sense of it, but I have lived so much in the graveyard, that all my folks there that I have buried and seen to, and so on, seem to me about as living as anybody. Landsakes, Archy! it’s a kind of a confused world, after all!”

And so it seemed to Archibald, as he slowly retraced his steps homeward, brooding on what he had heard from the old sexton, so much, and yet so little of what he longed to know of his mother. He had now reached the old house on the hillside, where Letty was first introduced to our readers, no longer seeming the old house; but repaired, repainted, and refurnished by the fruits of the New York lawyer’s hard work, it afforded to his father’s widow and her children, a most comfortable and happy home. And as Archibald sat surrounded by his brothers, who had all come home for the mournful occasion of the day, and saw them bright with intelligence, and good, and affectionate – the result of the combined necessities and opportunities of our New England youth; the opportunities for the most part supplied by Archibald – he felt that life, however checkered by disappointments, has healthy excitements and sweet consolations, so long as duty is its aim, and affection its stimulant.

The tea was over, a tea more luxurious, but not attended with less bustle or less clatter from his stepmother, than that which preceded his father’s death, when Mrs. Lisle’s domestic brought Archibald a letter, the writing covering three and a half sides of a foolscap sheet.

“Poor Archy!” exclaimed one of the younger Lisles, “there’s Dr Bay again! I wonder if he ever let you rest one day at home, without sending you one of his everlasting letters, as long as Paul’s epistle to the Romans. But what is that paper inside, Archy?”

Archibald unfolded it: “A certificate of the date of my birth; the careful doctor has always an eye to possible exigences.” He refolded it, and the letter also, without even glancing at that, and added, “It will keep till I have leisure to read it. It probably concerns some ancient landmark, or disputed boundary; we shall miss the doctor when he dies, as much as we should the county records, if they were all burned.” Lisle put the letter into his pocket, which, at no distant date, was to be worth to him all the “county records.”

The doorbell again rang, and another letter was brought to Lisle. “See, boys,” said his mother, “what it is to be a New York lawyer.”

The letter contained a telegraphic despatch, and in the course of an hour Lisle was in the express mail train for New York.

Chapter 29

“The day cometh when she who has made the wretched her children, shall be hailed ‘Mother,’ and she who has forgotten or ill-performed her duty to her children, shall be written childless.”

True to his dinner hour, six o’clock, Walter Herbert was slowly mounting the steps to his sister-in-law’s house, with that heavyheartedness one feels when there is no face within the door one cares to see, no voice one cares to hear. “This house is a tomb to me,” he murmured – old people have a trick of soliloquizing – “I now have always a bad taste in my mouth when I come near it.” As he rang the door-bell, a hackney-coach drove up, its door was opened, and a young lady in a gray dress, a straw bonnet, and blue veil, and a Russia-leather traveling sack on her arm – a railroad costume – alighted, and running up the steps asked the servant, who answered Mr Herbert’s ring, with much earnestness in her tone, “if Miss Grace Herbert were at home?” “No, miss,” answered John, and was shutting the door on the inquirer, his manner being rather addressed to the shabby coach than to her. Some of our servants naturalize the insolence of older civilizations with wonderful facility. The young person’s tone touched Uncle Walter’s soft heart. He put John aside, and opening wide the door, asked “If she wished to speak with Miss Herbert.” “I do, very much,” she replied, with a simplicity that won a smile from the dear old man, and casting her veil aside, she added, “Do you expect her in soon, sir?”

“No, not soon, nor till tomorrow evening, unless you will give me your name, and let me summon her. I think she will come at your bidding,” he added, as he gazed in the sweet and troubled face of the stranger. She was just deciding to accept the kindness, when Miss Carlton’s splendid carriage drove up, and the liveried coachman motioned to the miserable Irish driver of the hack to give place. He drew off. The modest little stranger’s eye encountered the supercilious stare of Miss Carlton, and dropping her veil, and saying, “It’s no matter, sir, I won’t trouble you,” she glided down the steps, and giving a direction to the coachman, drove away.

While he obeyed her order, Walter Herbert despatched the following note: – “Dearest Grace, come home forthwith. There has just been a distressed little damsel here inquiring for you. She is a tight-built, trig lass, with a dainty little mouth and lips, that an old man would love to kiss; and an eye like a star dropped from the firmament, and blue as that; and so light and fleet of foot, that as she sprang into the carriage, I cried aloud, ‘Give me back my youth.’ I should not wonder if she were your little friend, Alice Clifford. She looked at me as if she half knew me for your Uncle Walter.”

We must precede the slow coach to its destination in Wall Street, and enter Mr Lisle’s office where one clerk asked another who was rummaging tables and pigeonholes, “What he was searching for?”

“I am looking for the note brought by the policeman on Monday; it is not in the letterbox; it is not anywhere. Mr Lisle may return at any moment, and nothing vexes him like a missing paper.”

“You need not tell him it’s missing. It came from some poor devil in the Tombs, who is probably disposed of by this time.”

“No, that he is not. His messenger has been here three times today; he was here an hour ago, and sulked, and said he should not take the trouble to come again.”

“Why did you not ask the name of the person who sent him?”

“I did, and he said that was just what he did not know; ‘the name was to the note, he supposed.’”

“Ah, well, it’s some gent of the upper ten got into a scrape, who expects Mr Lisle to get him out, and keep his incognito. Let him take his chance. Come, sit down, Slidell, and let a fellow pursue his studies.”

Slidell looked over the student’s shoulder, and seeing him deep in the “last new novel,” gave an expressive a-hem, and returned to his own desk, and probably to some “study” equally recondite. But our young students were not destined to remain quiet at their learned researches. The door was ajar, a light footstep was heard, and the rustling of a petticoat, an unaccustomed sound in these resorts, followed by an eager tap at the door. Their “Come in,” was answered by the appearance of the young traveler already described. She paused on the threshold, and looked eagerly around, as if in quest of some person not present. The young men started to their feet, and stood awaiting the first word. It was uttered with intense earnestness:

“Is Mr Lisle here?”

“No; he is out of town.”

“When is he expected?”

“He may come tomorrow; perhaps not for some days. He left his return uncertain. We could hasten it by a letter.”

There was a pause, evidently a mental deliberation; a conclusion. “Is he on a telegraph line?” she asked.

“No, he is in some obscure village, not far from Boston.”

“Has Mr Lisle no friend in Boston whose name you know?”

“No; none.”

“No business correspondent?”

“Oh, yes. You know, Slidell? Judson Bates, Esq.”

“That may do. Will you be kind enough to give me pen, ink, and paper?”

She wrote:

Mr Bates, please send an express to Mr Archibald Lisle, requesting him to return to New York without delay, on important business of my brother’s.

Alice Clifford.

She then requested one of the young gentlemen to take the note to the telegraph office; and after giving him money to pay for it, she went with such swiftness down the long steep staircase, that Slidell, who followed her with the intention of offering to escort her through the questionable purlieus of Wall Street, just reached the outer steps in time to hear her tell her coachman to “drive to the Tombs.”

“Thunder! that’s a girl, Jem,” said he, returning to the office.

“A go-ahead, you mean, Slidell; but somehow I don’t fancy a girl, though she be so very pretty, with such a business way.”

“Oh, I know you don’t. You like a girl compounded of amiability, docility and imbecility, like the heroine of that story you are reading, who never had a thought of her own, or an independent action; a sort of ‘lean to’ to the noble structure, man. One of your sort, if she has soft blue eyes, or brown waving tresses, if she be blonde or brunette, has dimpled hands, and delicate feet; why, she’ll do to stand on a pedestal, and be worshiped till she’s twenty, but she’d be a devil of a drag for a wife. Now this peerless little stranger is in some sort of a strait, there’s no mistake; but if there’s a way out she’ll find it. How direct was her aim; how every word told! Would it have occurred to your kind of girl that a telegraph must be paid for? The deuce of a dollar could you and I have raised between us after last night’s spree at Delmonico’s. I am for women using the faculties Heaven has bestowed on them.”

“There’s sense in what you say Slidell, but heaven defend us from Women’s Rights women!”

“Amen and amen to that.”

While the young men were giving a brush to a much vexed question, Alice Clifford was pursuing her way through the dusky twilight to the Tombs. It was a drizzling, dirty evening. A feeble light from the lamps struggled through the foggy atmosphere; crowds of men were hurrying homeward from the business quarter. Overburdened women were carrying or dragging along lagging children, and here and there a drabbish-looking outcast, a frightful vestige of womanhood, crouched against a wall. Omnibuses and vehicles of all sorts were in a crush, their wearied drivers shouting and swearing. Alice sunk back in her seat, after for a moment curiously eyeing, through the misty window of her coach, a scene so new to her. “Oh, what a dreadful place!” she exclaimed, “how can people live here? There is not a hut, or shed in Mapleton that I would not rather have than a palace here! Oh, my poor brother in a prison in a city, itself a prison! How slow he drives; I shall be too late!” But the coach was soon extricated from the crowd, and driven at a fair pace down Leonard Street to the Tombs, the prison so called from its resemblance to its gloomy Egyptian model. Alice heaved a deep sigh as her eye ran over it from turret to foundation stone.

“Shall I wait, Miss?” asked the coachman, as she was taking from her purse the money to pay the unconscionable fee the fellow demanded. After hesitating for an instant, for her calculations for the night had not gone beyond her meeting with her brother, she gave a decided negative, and was pressing on from the dreary outside to the more fearful inside, when her steps were arrested by the whimpering of her dog, a little Blenheim spaniel, who had leaped out of the coach before her, and made a spring upon the heels of a man passing. He turned and gave the little animal a blow with his cane, that sent him back howling to his mistress’ feet. “Poor Pixie!” she said, taking him caressingly in her arms. His cries continued, and brought out of a small room adjoining the entrance, a little woman, who, asking what had happened, the coachman replied, pointing to the man just turning the corner into Centre Street, “’Twas that brute, he struck the lady’s dog.”

“Oh, I know the fellow,” said the woman, looking after him.

“Do you, ma’am?” said Alice, earnestly, as if she too recognized him; “what is his name?”

“I don’t recall his name; I’m poor on names; he’s always haunting round here to see his comrades who get in, when he’s lucky enough to keep out. You were wanting some one perhaps, Miss?” added the woman, with an official air, tempered with kindness.

“Yes, ma’am; I wish to see the keeper of the prison.”

“The keeper, my dear? Why there’s ever so many keepers here. There’s the head-keeper, Mr Edson, and ever so many underlings, and there’s myself that looks after the women; do you want anything of me?”

“Oh, yes; above all things I want some kind woman to help me.”

The little woman nodded, as if to say, “That’s me!” and Alice felt her heart revive as she looked into her new friend’s face, and inferred the capabilities indicated in her keen humorous eye, her ruddy cheek, and a pleasant smile that expressed a benevolence which even the uses of her revolting office could not stale. She had a firmly knit strong frame, sturdy and short, and Alice felt like a frightened little bird, ready to cower under a strong wing.

“My name, young lady,” she said, showing her into the small receiving room, “is Juliana C. Barton; sit down and make yourself comfortable – a light heart’s a small burden, as I tell my folks when I put them in the ‘Black Maria,’ or boat them for Sing Sing.”

“Comfortable” was a word just then struck out of Alice’s vocabulary. She remained standing, and inquired if Mrs Barton were acquainted with the male prisoners?

“No, my child, I know nothing about them. I used to have a kind of curiosity to see murderers and gentlemen defaulters, but they are so common nowadays that I am ’come indifferent.”

“Have you heard of a young man, committed on Saturday, for a – a forgery?”

“La, no, my dear; that happens every day.”

“There was a young man so committed. How am I to find him?”

“Oh, that’s ‘as easy as sinning,’ as I say to my ladies. We must go to Edson; he’ll look into his records for a pretty young lady, when he would n’t lift a finger for an old one; but that’s men’s ways, you know. You won’t mind going through the ‘five days quarter,’ it’s the shortest cut.”

Alice would not have shrunk from the “shortest cut,” were it through purgatory, to her object.

Mrs Barton, taking a ponderous key from her waist, unlocked the door that led into a long corridor, with staircases on one side and cells on the other, story above story to the top of the building. It is in this, the “five days quarter,” that the human offal of the city is every morning emptied. Alice’s quick eye took in a new sense of human depravation. She groaned aloud, as she looked around upon the miserable wretches, some sitting singly, sullen, shivering against the stone wall, some gossiping in groups, and some lying where they had been thrown, on mattresses in the cells, still steeped in intoxication, and all in dirt and rags, and branded with the grossest vices. Alice gathered her garments close around her, and clinging to Mrs Barton, begged her to hurry through the place.

“Poor child; it’s something new to you, but there’s no use in feeling,” said the habituée; “you see they don’t much mind it.” She paused as a woman brushed by them, just brought in from a scene of riot, which she was coarsely caricaturing to an acquaintance, while her own little boy was filching pennies out of her pocket.

“That woman,” said Mrs Barton, lowering her voice, “is Adèle de Russe, alias Sally Tomkins. ’Tis not six years since I saw her riding, fine as the finest of fine ladies, with Sam Belson.”

“Oh,” said Alice, “I never heard of her; I never heard of Sam Belson; please, ma’am, let us go on.”

“Yes, yes. I thought you might have some curiosity; but I see you don’t know much of city doings. I’d like to show Sally as she is to that mother and daughter that I saw yesterday chatting so soft and so friendly with Belson, at their carriage door before Stewart’s shop. A decent lady should not let the hem of her gown brush the skirts of the coat of such as he! If they saw what I see! my! There’s a difference between men and women, that’s a fact: there’s Sally and there’s he! but come to the upshot, there’ll not be a pin’s head to choose between them; if anything, I’d rather stand in her shoes than his, at the judgment; there will be a cloud of witnesses against such as he, thieves and murderers they are!”

While Mrs Barton was thus evolving the wisdom she had distilled from her observation of penal life, and carrying her analogies from the police court to a higher tribunal, they had passed through the prison yard, and re-entered at the mens’ department. “Well done, little young lady!” she exclaimed, as they turned from Edson’s office, with the permit to visit the young man in “cell No. 30,” “you are a trump! Why, if the Mayor, and the Ten Governors to boot, were to come into Edson’s office, he would not hush up, and go straight to the business in hand, as he did for you; his tongue is – well, it’s like the sea, never still. Stay a minute, Tim,” she continued, to the turnkey whom she had summoned to unlock No. 30, “we must arrange before you go in. I would not like,” she lowered her voice, “to leave you in the care of the men – they ain’t all what they should be –”

“Oh pray,” cried Alice, interrupting her, and feeling as if she should be maddened by another minute’s delay, “let me go in – wait five minutes. Open the door, pray –”

“Well – open it, Tim.” The turnkey obeyed. Alice sprang in. Mrs Barton put her hand over the turnkey’s to keep the door open, till she saw and heard the recognition. The words, “Dear sister!” “Poor Max!” the close, fond embrace, the burst of tears, satisfied her. She shut the door, and her voice trembled in sympathy, as she exclaimed, “All right, all right! The Lord forgive me, but I thought nothing short of a love-scrape would carry a girl straight ahead like that. And after all she’s nothing but a sister! Well, a sister’s love is always the same, and lasts to the end; that’s the love for my money.” Our friend was only Mistress Barton by courtesy. “Come, come, little lady,” she called out, after restlessly walking up and down, “it’s twice five minutes, and I must be going.” She re-opened the door, and her heart melted as she found Alice still sobbing on her brother’s neck. “I am real sorry to break you off,” she said, “but I’m pushed for time. I must be in Williamsburg at eight, exact, at my niece’s wedding; and before I go, I must see you safe on your way to your place.”

“My place!” echoed Alice; “I have not any place.”

“No place to go to! Such a sensible little lady as you, not to provide a place to go to.”

“Oh, Mrs Barton, I thought only of getting to my brother, and staying by him. Can’t I stay here? Do let me.”

“My dear, it’s contrary to all rules. You can’t –”

“Can’t you take me to your home, Mrs Barton? I don’t care for a bed. Let me sit in your parlor, lie on your floor, anything.”

“If I had a half hour to spare, my dear, I could take you to twenty decent places; but weddings won’t wait. I’m after time now.”

“Why not go to Miss Herbert, Alice?” asked her brother.

“I have been there, Max; she is not at home, and I can’t ask a favor of the ladies there. Is there not an empty room here, near my brother, Mrs Barton, that I may occupy?”

“Well, that is a proposition!” said Mrs Barton, holding up both her hands. “Yes, my dear, we’ve empty rooms – we call ’em cells, but –”

“But what? Are they not clean?”

“They are whitewashed and scoured, soon’s ever the tenant leaves.”

“And can not I take the key and lock myself in?”

“You can; but my! the thing was never heard of, that a feminine was locked up in the male department.”

“Is there a rule against it?”

“Well, no, I guess not. No rule against what no one ever thought of, but kind o’ silent law.”

“Then let it be silent, good Mrs Barton. I am sure you can do what you like here, and no one will dare to find fault with you.”

Mistress Barton was touched by this sagacious perception of her magisterial authority.

“It’s a new case,” she said; “but I think I may use my judgment. I see you are something out of the common way, young lady. Tim,” to the turnkey, “unlock No. 31.” The door was unlocked. Mrs Barton put her head in, and pronounced it “sweet as a nut.” “I’ll just fix the bed for you,” she said; and was proceeding to arrange the iron bedstead that, with its mattress, was turned up against the wall,

“Oh no, no, ma’am, please,” said Alice, “I will lie on the clean floor.”

“If you’re so partic’lar, miss,” said the turnkey, “there’s a bran new rocking chair, sent in yesterday for the gentleman that left for Sing Sing – he never sot in it.”

“So much the better,” thought Alice, and throwing her blanket-shawl over it, “there’s my bed,” she said, and heartily thanking kind Mistress Barton, and agreeing with the turnkey that he should let her out of her brother’s cell at his last round, she re-entered it, and was locked in; and Mrs Juliana S. Barton wended her way through the prison, murmuring, “There’s a girl for my money! She knows what she is about, and can take care of herself; and others, too, if need be – and so young, and so pretty! But she’s as safe as if she had a legion of angels to see to her.” Wise and simple come to the same conclusion.

“So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,

That, when a soul is found sincerely so,

A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”

Chapter 30

“A first-rate business lad he was, but, like other bright lads, needed the careful eye of a senior, to guard him from the pitfalls he was exposed to.”

Amos Lawrence

By the liberal use of those appliances which do the work in our actual life, of wishing caps and talismanic rings in Eastern story, Alice procured, through the turnkey, that unspeakable consolation to lads of twenty and thereabouts – a good supper; and when her brother had eaten his oysters and drank his coffee, he, in his own phrase, “rose up a new man, and fit to live.”

“Now, Alice, tell me,” he said, “how my mother took the news? I could not ask you till I got fortified.”

“Dear Max, she has not yet got the news. She went on Monday morning to Boston.”

“And you were at home alone? poor, dear little Alice!”

“Oh, I was but too thankful that my mother was gone; and I trust she will hear nothing till we have consulted with Archibald Lisle. I have telegraphed to him, and I feel sure he will be here tomorrow.”

“Then he is out of town – thank Heaven! I have sent, and sent to his office, and could get no answer. I thought he believed me guilty, and had given me up.”

“No, he is not of that sort, Max.”

“And did you come away without telling anyone? You are the dearest, pluckiest little girl in the world.”

“Yes, I consulted no one; but by this time – You know how it is at Mapleton – give but the least ray of light, and their sharp eyes can read any riddle. I was at the Prescotts when the mail came in; Laura opened her paper, and the very first paragraph she saw she read aloud. It was to this effect, I can repeat it word by word: ‘A young man from Massachusetts was apprehended yesterday, for passing a forged check at the Manhattan Bank. As we hear he has respectable connections, we withhold his name for the present.’”

“And so, I suppose, you wise young women of Mapleton jumped to the conclusion that I was the only clerk in New York from Massachusetts?”

“Oh, Max, I know not what Laura and the rest did; they were all silent. My heart throbbed, and I made some pretext, and ran home through the garden. Your letter lay on the table – it was written on coarse, soiled paper.”

“Yes, I remember, a sheet I got here in the office.”

“Well, that boded no good. I sat, feeling very faint and wretched, five minutes before I had courage to open it.”

“You did open it; – spare yourself the trouble of telling me the contents, as I had the pleasure of writing it.”

“Ah, but dear Max,” said Alice, throwing her arm around her brother, and bursting afresh into tears, “you don’t know what a comfort the last line in it was to me. Those blessed words: ‘I am innocent, mother; take my word for it.’ Why, Max darling, they seemed to spread over the whole letter. So often have I heard dear mother in her different distresses about you – and you know they have occurred pretty often – so often have I heard her say ‘My boy is true. I take comfort in that, he never told me a lie.’”

“I never did. I never was afraid to tell my mother the truth; but go on, Alice. Did you hate me for always getting you all into hot water? What did you think?”

“I thought of nothing, but how I could best help you. I had no one to advise with. Cousin John, and Judge Bliss, were gone from Mapleton, and there were none but women left, and they were not wiser than I. So I resolved to come to you at once. I came off to meet the early train, leaving a cheerful note to Miss Laura, begging her to account as well as she could to the inquiring community of Mapleton for my absence.” Alice proceeded to relate the disappointments attending her visits to Miss Herbert, and at Lisle’s office; and concluded with saying, “Now, dear Max, tell me the whole of your troubles from the beginning. I am afraid both you and Archy have kept us in the dark.”

“No; but in the dusk, it may be, dear. I shall make a short story of it, for I am my own hero, and good for neither song nor sermon, neither bright enough for the one, nor black enough for the other.”

“Well, dear Alice, you know, when I slumped at college, Archy got me a place in what is called one of the ‘most respectable houses in the city: Messrs Beekwell, and Co.;’ and so I suppose they are, and were, but a deuced bit did they care for us clerks beyond getting work out of us. But that did not matter to me so long as I had Archy. Alice, no brother could have done more for me – not our dear Arthur if he had been alive.”

“Yes, Max, you wrote us about that – how he gave you up his sitting room at his lodgings, for your bedroom.”

“Oh, as to that, Alice, that was not half. And at first, I did not thank him much for that. I thought he meant to stand guard over me, and you know fellows don’t like to be watched.”

“Especially fellows that need watching, dear Max.”

“A brush! Never mind, I deserve it. He soon made me forget that he was anything but a dear friend and companion. He seldom went out himself – Archy was always a dig, you know – and so he did not know how much I pined for some pleasant houses to visit at. He did take me one evening to the Herberts, to introduce me to your friend. She was out, and that Miss Carlton and her mother treated me as if I had come into their drawing room by mistake, and should, like any other poor devil of a clerk, have stayed in the entry with my bill, or parcel. Miss Herbert was up to the mark, for she wrote me the next day a kind note, asking me to visit them sociably. Lord! I see myself going again, to have my blood simmering in my veins, as it did while I sat there – better blood than theirs, with all their airs. Besides, Archy did not go often, himself.”

“Did not go often to see Grace, before he went abroad? Are you sure, Max?”

“Why, Alice, do you expect everybody to worship your idol? Archy did not, any how. When I could get out of the store in any decent time, I always found him at our rooms, and he was so kind. When he was hard at work, and could not go out, he would have a pleasant book for me – you know I am not a deep reader, Alice – and if he were at leisure, he would propose going with me to a lecture, or to study over the Chinese curiosities, or to see a panorama; and now and then he took me to the opera, or the theatre, just enough to slake a fellow’s thirst for such things; and sometimes we would drop into a saloon, and get an oyster supper, or an ice, or have a little jollification at home. Dear old Archy! he had not forgotten what it was to be a ‘young youth.’”

“Forgotten! Archibald Lisle is not so very much older than you, Max.”

“No; seven or eight years, though – but, Alice, that makes all the difference between the boy and the man; and I was a boy then; and heaven forgive me, have been more of a boy and a worse boy since. All went well enough till Archy got ill and dumpish and went abroad, and I was left to myself. Now, Alice, I am not good company to myself. I must have eye answering to eye, voice to voice, heart to heart, Alice; but to be alone – alone in this city of half a million, I could not stand it, and no heart of flesh could.”

“But, surely, Max, you were introduced to Mr Beekwell’s family? You never told us you were not.”

“No, my dear; for we don’t tell things of course; but were you so green as to suppose that a mere clerk – a country lad – would be admitted by the grand Pachas of the city into their palaces! Neither Mr. Beekwell nor his partner could write a grammatical sentence, or spell ten consecutive words correctly, but they had mounted the golden rungs of their ladder to the very top, and there was a great gulf between them and their hard-working clerks.”

“But, surely, Max, all merchants are not so to their clerks?”

“Of course, Alice, not all. I know some that are like fathers to them, and that will be the best item of all, I guess, when they come to foot up their last accounts. But I tell you, Alice, the reason so many boys go astray, and are lost in this city is, because the ‘old gentleman’ is left to fill up their idle time; and you see, Alice, they come fresh and innocent from their country homes; they long for some one to say even as much as ‘good morning Sam,’ or ‘good night Tom;’ they go to some lodging house where no body cares for them, but to get their week’s board, and they are sure to fall in with some scamp, as I did. I have seen enough of it.”

The young people had both lingered on the threshold of Max’s story, dreading to plunge into its darkest part. The poor lad now proceeded manfully.

“Just after Archibald sailed, there came a fresh clerk into our establishment – Ernest Gilmore. He belonged to the ‘upper ten;’ had been to one famous school after another, and had finally been boosted into the junior class in Columbia College, when he was set adrift and placed in the ‘respectable house of Messrs Beekwell, and Co.,’ where it was expected that hard work would break him in. Anyone ‘can lead a horse to water,’ you know, Alice, but all creation could not make ‘Gil,’ as we called him, work. I need not go into particulars. He took a fancy to me. He was lively, and loved fun, and so did I – you know that is my speciality, and I can’t help it. He had credit at tailors, and livery stables, and everywhere, for he was yet in his minority, and if he did not pay, his father would have to come down with the tin. I did not know all this, Alice, at the time; I would never have been a party to this plunder with my eyes open, nor did I know when he passed his minority. By this time he had pretty thoroughly inoculated me with his passion for fast horses, and fast doings in general. Don’t open your eyes so wide, and look so scared, my dear little sister. I give you my word that I never went to any place that I would hesitate to tell you of. No, there I made a stand, or rather there stood my mother and you, and hedged up the road to temptation that way. Do you remember, Alice, when you and I were little children, on our knees, saying our prayers to mother, that she asked us to promise her that we would never in our whole lives omit repeating, each day, that first prayer we learned: ‘Our Father, etc.’”

“Yes, indeed, I do.”

“And how solemn and sweet she seemed, and with tears in her eyes, and all that; well, we made the promise, you know; and now honor bright, Alice, I do believe that nothing short of a miracle would have made such a head-over-heels fellow, as I, keep such a promise; but I have kept it. That little prayer, Alice, covers the whole ground.”

“So I think, dear Max.”

“I know it has brought me short up many a time, for, Alice, to tell the whole truth, while Archy was in Europe, I led a pretty fast, risky life; and it was no wise strange that the first thing he heard after he came home, was from Beekwell and Co., that I must lose my place there. He set to work, like a good fellow, and got me another, far better. I should have been thrown out but for him. He made himself responsible to Messrs Eaton and Smith for my good conduct. They have treated me like gentlemen – that is as if I were a gentleman. And truly, Alice, fearing that you and my mother would be made miserable by my misconduct, and feeling what I owed to Archy, I have, for the last six months, strained every rope in the ship; but they would, once in a while, get slack – a fellow can’t walk a crack forever, Alice; and Gilmore was forever haunting about me, and as I found, now, when we had a spree, I had to pay the fiddler, which he had done while he could, it seemed mean always to back out. Still I did not go with him often. If I had not the fear of Archy before my eyes, I had the love of him, which is better. All this last ten months Gil has been borrowing money of me – two or three dollars at a time, sometimes five, and up to ten. While I had a penny, could I refuse him, after he had been so lavish to me? But, oh, Alice! you’ve no notion how like lightning a man goes, when he begins to slide down hill. Last week, on Tuesday, he came to me, and said he, ‘Well, I have been reckoning up all my small debts to you, and I find, to my astonishment, I owe you seventy-five dollars.’ It did not astonish me, for I had been as bare as a picked chicken. ‘Luckily,’ said he, ‘I have the means to pay the debt,’ and he put into my hands a draft on the Manhattan Bank, made out in my favor, by Charles Innes of Boston, to the amount of five hundred dollars. I started, and he said, ‘Happy dog! am I not? Old Aunt Sukey is dead, and this Charles Innes, her executor, wrote me she had left me this legacy of five hundred dollars. So, desiring that my various creditors should not get wind of this blessed windfall, that I might save it from the sharks, and pay it to the honest fellows like you, I wrote to said Innes to forward me the money by a draft in your favor. He did so – I have an appointment to go up to Albany with my father at three o’clock (it was then half-past two); if you will step round to the bank, and get the money, take out your dues, and just hand me the balance, we shall be all fair and square. I have an errand for my father at the Metropolitan, and will meet you between there and here.’ I did not, for an instant, think of foul play. I was too glad at the prospect of getting back my money. I presented the draft, met Gilmore, paid him the balance, obtained leave of a day’s absence from Messrs Eaton and Smith, ran off to my lodgings, and was packing my carpetbag in a prodigious fluster of joy to run up to Yonkers, and visit a friend, who had invited me, and who (between you and me, Alice,) has the prettiest sister in Christendom, when there was a fearful ring of the doorbell, an ominous sound in the entry, and without knocking, without leave or licence, a policeman entered my room, and politely laying his hand upon me, said he would change the address of my luggage to the Tombs. I was aghast, and did not even surmise whence the blow came, till he told me my fraud was discovered a half hour after I left the bank. He examined my person and my effects for the money, and found the seventy-five dollars in my purse. I protested my innocence, of course, but he only smiled and said, ‘humbug! we are used to all that, young man.’ I begged him not to disgrace me by a commitment, and told him I had a friend who, I was sure, would be my bail. The fellow had some bowels, and he waited for an answer to a note I sent to Archy. Archy was gone, as you know, and everything went against me. And so I was brought here, as they say, ‘duly committed.’”

“Why, in the world, Max, did you not send for Mr. Eaton or Mr. Smith, and tell them how it was?”

“That’s you, dear Alice; you always think of the right thing to be done. Well, my child, I was stunned. I was in a hot fever all night. I could think of nothing but my mother and you. I did not eat a morsel, not even when breakfast time came (mirabile!), but your rational thought did at last, some time this morning, come into my head, and I despatched a note to Mr. Smith. Mr Smith was out of town. Eaton is in Europe. The head clerk came round to me; I told him the whole story. He did not half believe me; you know how it is with some stupid people – if a man is accused and put in prison, they think he is as good as convicted. However, he did go up to Gilmore, and came back, having seen both Gilmore and his father. Gil denied having seen me for a week, and expressed the most perfect astonishment at my story. His father said they had had no intention of going to Albany, and that his son had dined at home on Tuesday as usual, and spent the evening at home. So Davis, the clerk, said I could do nothing further without a lawyer’s advice, hoped I should be able to clear myself, said business pressed, and left me, Alice; that’s the way with the world, my dear!”

“Oh, I hate the world, Max.”

Alice’s faith in her brother was implicit, but her heart sickened when she found he had not a shadow of evidence to substantiate his innocence before a legal tribunal. Younger than Max, and albeit of the weaker sex, she had more clearness and sedateness of judgment than her brother, and less of that quality which she called buoyancy, and others might term levity. After pondering for a while gloomily on Max’s relation, she naturally exclaimed, “What a horrid hardened wretch that Gilmore must be!”

“Well, Alice, not quite such a hardened wretch as you think. Scampish he is, but there is not much to him; he is more of the weak, than the wicked. He has had a poor bringing up. His father and mother are nothing but rich. They thought, I suppose, that their grand house, and carriage, and horses, and so on, would make Gil a gentleman; but you know all that won’t begin to do it. No, Gil is not so bad as some; there ’s shades in fellows, Alice. Gil got hooked in with an old stager, who dragged him down – a rascally blackguard of an Irish gentleman.”

Alice had heard of one such individual in her sheltered world, and but one, and she asked with some eagerness his name.

“His name,” Max replied, “is Maltby, Hugh Maltby.”

“Hugh Maltby!” echoed Alice.

“Why, yes, my child – Hugh Maltby; surely you never heard of the fellow before? What in the world makes you color so?”

“Color! Did I color, Max? I am tired and nervous tonight.”

“That is not it, sister dear. Come, you are not good at evasions. Tell me what you know of Hugh Maltby.”

“I cannot tell you, Max. Don’t ask me.”

“I won’t, Alice; but I can’t think what you can know about that wretch. I believe he is at the bottom of this plot. Gil owed him a gambling debt, and he was afraid of him. He is a daredevil. I heard him threaten to shoot some relation of his children, their uncle, or something of that sort.” Alice became now deadly pale. She averted her face, poured a draught of water into a glass, and swallowed it. “You are tired and nervous, I believe,” continued Max. “Let’s drop the curtain on our miseries, till Archy comes to help us. Tell me about Mapleton. How is dear mother, just the same?”

“Yes, just, Max,” replied his sister, breathing a deep sigh, as she thought the news of her darling boy would turn her hair gray.

“Oh, don’t fall into the blues again, Alice. How are Tom Thumb and Brancus – alive?”

“Yes, indeed, and flourishing; mother surfeits them, but still calls them ‘Max’s pests.’”

“And Blossom – does he still purr around the table, and mother drop him titbits, furtively?”

“Yes, Max.”

“And mother still uses carving knives, instead of bolts, for the outer doors? and gives old John a hundred dollars a year, for ‘doing chores’ he can’t do? Poor mother, she’s great on pensions.”

“She is great at every mode of charity. Has she written you about the paralytic child she is taking care of?”

This announcement, which Alice had been for some minutes studying how to interject into their discourse, did not, as she expected, produce a sensation. Max smiled, said, “Just like mother,” and went on. “Is Mapleton the same heaven as usual, Alice? No marriages? No engagements? Neither of the charming Prescotts going off, nor Charlotte Platt, nor the Days?”

“No, none of them.”

“Not a ‘Singleton’ missing from ‘Singleside’ in the last year! I told them so; they seem to look on us men as an elegant superfluity.” Thus the poor lad rattled on, partly taxing his manhood to be as heroic as possible, and partly following the natural bent of his careless disposition.

Cushioned round with love, the evening glided away in that dismal place. Now and then Alice, disturbed by the foreshadowings of revenges dire that might be done by a bold, bad man, and of “trial” and “sentence,” would start or shiver, which Max noticing, he would kiss her cheek, and draw her closer to him.

At nine the turnkey’s knock announced their separation for the night. They asked for a reprieve, but the man was peremptory. “We’ve already stretched a point,” he said; “we must use our private judgments sometimes.” Our officials are very apt to respect this “higher law.” “I can see,” he added, as he gave Miss Clifford a lamp, and the key that she might turn the bolt on the inside, “when people is honorable, and can be trusted with a privilege.”

Alice locked her door, and having arranged her little affairs for the night, she sat down in the rocking chair, made a desk of her lap, and began a letter to her mother. Her courage was nerved by the strangeness of her position. Courage she had to face any danger in her brother’s cause, and resolution to conquer any conquerable difficulty. That there could be any danger to freeze the blood in her young veins within the walls of her cell, had not even occurred to her, and when she turned her bolt she felt as secure as the commander of an impregnable fortress; yet within that narrow space, she was to encounter an enemy more fearful to her than the wild beasts of Ephesus.

“Great giants work great wrongs, but we are small.”

The noise of steps and bolting of doors along the passages had ceased; there was no sound but that of her sharp gold pen, when she was startled by an ominous noise, and starting up, she saw – not one, nor two, nor three, but, as she afterward averred, a drove of mice, careering over the bed, jumping to the floor, and there disporting themselves, native and happy citizens!

No poor wretch in an Indian jungle, confronting a tiger, could have been more terrified than our hitherto intrepid little Alice. She sprang on her feet into the chair; the rockers were treacherous – over it went, chair, lamp, ink, Alice, and all!

It was now utter darkness, and luckily quiet, too. The little habitués were frightened back to their holes by the sudden turmoil, and Alice, making an effort of heroism equal to St George’s, in his contest with the dragon, or to any other saint’s with any other monster, groped around until she recovered her lamp, and relighted it from a match in her sack. What was next to be done? In a lion’s den, or a fiery furnace, she might have looked for miraculous intervention; but now she must trust to her own right arm – to that poor trembling arm. A rattan in the corner of the cell caught her eye, she seized this weapon, and intrenching herself in the chair in a posture which those who have seen female belligerents engaged in this warfare will picture to themselves, she girded herself for the battle.

For a while she kept the enemy in their entrenchments by a steady tattooing with the cane, but its sound soon became as familiar to them as the snorings of the last denizen of the cell, and they issued forth, rank and file. To anyone of the male sex their gambols, their glidings, and leapings might have been amusing, but there is enmity set between mice and womankind, and to Alice they seemed a host of malignants, magicians, monsters! To touch their soft hairy sides, even with her cane, was a horror, but by deftly plying that she kept them at arm’s length. She changed the cane from wearied hand to hand. The night seemed interminable, and reference to her watch alone convinced her that it was “but eleven,” “but twelve,” “but one,” “but two!” Sleep, the surest of youth’s allies, at last came to her relief; her tired, aching arms fell, no longer obedient to her will, and the will itself (for so say the sages is its nature) fell asleep, and the enemy had it all their own way; and while poor Alice’s brain was perturbed with visions of leviathans and mastodons, they ran up to her shoulders, leaped into her lap, and performed divers antics, till one, crossing her bare throat in quest of a crumb from her supper that had lodged on the hem of her collar, she started up to a fresh consciousness of the horrors of her condition.

But now sounds of the restless city’s life penetrated from without to her cell; and as “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” hope that she might live to tell the tale dawned on Alice.

Chapter 31

“Our youth, our childhood, that spring of springs,

’Tis surely one of the blessedest things,

That nature ever invented.”

“Beautiful is the light and pleasant to behold!” and never did it seem to Alice so beautiful, so pleasant to behold, as when, brightening the world, it stole slowly and dimly into her cell. The little doers of evil deeds had shrunk away into darkness; and yet she waited, and listened two mortal hours before she heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor. But she did hear them, and hearing her own name pronounced, she sprang to the door, turned the bolt, and rushing out, confronted – Archibald Lisle!

Pardon her, fastidious reader – the truth must be told – “Oh, Archy!” she exclaimed, and throwing her arms around his neck, she clung to him as to a dear brother, who had brought her comfort and help; then, as suddenly retreating, she covered her blushing face with both hands, and stammered out apologetically, “I forgot myself – I have been so dreadfully terrified!”

“Terrified!” exclaimed Lisle, looking fiercely at the turnkey, “who has molested you?”

Poor Alice hesitated, and in one breath made the short passage from the sublime to the ridiculous, answering in the feeblest, meekest tone, “Mice!!” and then looking up and seeing the too expressive smile on Archibald’s lips, and meeting his laughing eye, she laughed herself, a little hysterically, and looking again, and comprehending at a glance the change that had passed on Lisle, from a country-bred youth, fresh from college, to the perfection of ripe manhood, and seeing in place of the smooth face and the delicately tinted skin, a countenance consolidated by experience, illuminated by the habit of keen observation, and yet preserving an indefinable sweetness and sensibility that her memory had retained as the charm of its immaturity – “Mercy!” she thought, “what must he think of me? How could I rush so into his arms?” “Mr Lisle,” she began, with a very sober consciousness –

“Archy, if you please,” he said, interrupting her; “let me be still Archy, as you must remain ‘little Alice’ to me, while you continue in peril of life, limb, and reason from a mouse, just as you were when you ran shrieking out of your mother’s pantry.”

“A mouse! Why there were droves of the horrid creatures; but it was not altogether my terror that made me so – so – so –”

“Affectionate in your welcome? Now don’t take that back, dear Alice.”

“No, indeed!” she said, giving him her hand; “I am very, very glad to see you, so glad that I forgot it was seven years since we parted, and that I am no longer a little girl, and you no longer the very young man who was almost as familiar and dear in our home, as the brother we loved and mourned together. You know you almost took that brother’s place, and it was on the strength of that feeling that we appealed to you in our present strait – and how kind of you to come so soon.”

“Ah, dear Alice, your reasons are excellent, your instincts were better. Now let me know all that has happened to Max. I have only partly learned it from the officer here. I need no assurance of his innocence.”

While her brother, who had just been awakened by the turnkey’s thundering rap at his door, was hurrying on his clothes, Alice briefly detailed the particulars. She was disturbed at Archibald vehemently biting his nails while he listened, an old inevitable trick of his, as she remembered, when anything seriously disturbed him. “Do you think it very bad?” she concluded.

“We will try to make it better,” he replied, turning from her to enter Max’s cell, and to receive his affectionate welcome, demonstrated without any of the lets and hindrances that nature and society put between the sexes. After the glow of meeting had passed, cares overshadowed Archibald’s brow, and he proposed at once to begin his work by offering bail for his friend.

“I knew you would do that,” said Max, gratefully, “but for conscience sake first send me a breakfast. I never can work or think till I have had my breakfast. Alice contrived to procure me a capital supper last evening.”

“Alice! she can do anything,” rejoined Archibald; “but confront – mice!” mimicking the low deprecating tone in which she had uttered that word.

“Oh, that’s nothing!” exclaimed Max, rather jealous of his sister’s reputation. “All women, young and old, are just such geese about mice. I should like you, Archy, to show me another girl who would have come straightway and alone to a city where she never was before – on such an errand – and hitting all her nails on the head too. I say, Alice, you may be a coward about mice, if you will.”

“I am afraid I can’t help it, dear Max; I am a coward upon instinct.”

“And everything that’s good and noble upon instinct, dear sister, so let that go for what it will fetch.”

Archibald looked at the brother and sister with a smile, provoked, Alice thought, by the vain-glorying of her brother; she did not understand it.

Archibald felt the impropriety of Alice prolonging her stay in her present quarters, and briefly explaining his relations with the Steinbergs he proposed taking her there. “Your breakfast, Max,” he said, “must wait till your sister is comfortably bestowed.”

“What a brute was I not to think of that,” exclaimed Max; “but that’s just me, I never think. I could fast a week for you, dear Alice, when once it was put into my head. Go with Archibald, and as soon as I am bailed out I will come to you.”

So they parted.

The unintermitting necessity of hard work, and the intervention of illness and absence had prevented, for some years, Lisle’s often anticipated visits to Mapleton. When last he saw Alice there, she was a mere child – Arthur’s pet and plaything, and his. “Eye-bright,” they called her from the resemblance of the color of her eye to the little star flower sprinkled, like dewdrops over all the greensward of our northern country. The result of his first scrutiny on meeting her was not flattering, “The sparkle of her childhood is gone,” thought he. “I expected to see her taller. The eye retains its lovely color, but it lacks lustre, and there is about her hair and dress altogether an unbecoming negligence. Her mother’s disdain of personal decoration, tells sadly on her.” Lisle forgot to make allowance for the muss and soil of railroad travel, for the weariness, warring, watching, and weeping of thirty-six hours. He compared her, perhaps unconsciously, with his fixed standard of beauty. Certainly, Alice had not the height, the unconscious and consummate grace, or the brilliancy of coloring that characterized her friend, nor those irradiations of countenance that convey thought and feeling with the electrical swiftness of the telegraph. Lisle was but a man, and he was, even yet, with all his struggles and convictions, a lover, and, therefore, must be pardoned his susceptibility to the external. His reflections did justice to the intensity of Alice’s devotion to her brother, and to her clear-headedness. A man admires that quality in a woman the more that it surprises him. His zeal and his fears were quickened by her presence. Alice felt strong in the innocence of her brother; Lisle knew it must be proven to those who had no such faith. After installing Alice in the comfortable quarters to which the Steinbergs had removed, he decided to inform Miss Herbert of her arrival in town. Lisle was now deeper in the world than when he wore his frock coat to Mrs Jones’s dinner, and previous to presenting himself before Miss Herbert, he repaired to his own lodgings to perform his morning toilet. In this process he cast aside the traveling coat in which lay perdu the letter he had received at his country home from the village doctor. This letter containing some interesting matter, was destined to remain unread till another crisis of his life.

Walter Herbert was coming down stairs, when he heard Lisle’s voice inquiring for his niece. He hobbled down at his utmost speed, grasped Archibald’s hand with both his, and with a face so joyous that it recalled to Lisle its utterly bereft expression when he last saw him. “Come up stairs,” he said, “to my room. What on earth were you away for at this particular time? Oh, I know. God forbid that I should forget that poor little girl’s fate; and the sorrow to you. I was dreadfully shocked. But, my dear fellow, I am too happy now to remember griefs – the world’s a flash of sunshine!”

“What can this mean?” thought Lisle. Of course it could only mean the rupture of Grace’s engagement. “Saved from drowning” would have been nothing, in comparison, to Walter Herbert. But he was prevented by that ubiquitous woman, his sister-in-law, to whom her servant had conveyed Lisle’s inquiry. She opened the door of the breakfast room, and called out in her officious tone, “Oh, good morning, Mr Lisle, you wish to see Miss Grace?” (“The devil take her,” muttered Uncle Walter between his teeth. Excuse him, he was an old-fashioned man.) “She is with Mrs Tallis,” continued the lady. “She has lost her only child – quite a severe affliction; and her husband was absent at the time – an aggravation, you know; and she has no near friends, and Grace and she were schoolmates; she has gone to stay with her till the funeral is over.”

“There is dreadful misery there,” murmured Walter Herbert, while Lisle, with forced politeness, listened to the garrulous woman, and was turning to go, when Mr Herbert said,

“You are in a prodigious hurry. Will you come back before dinner?”

“Before dinner, if I can.”

“It must be before dinner, Lisle, for I must see you, and I am going up the river immediately after dinner.”

“Then sir, it shall be before dinner, if possible.”

But Lisle did not find it possible, and Uncle Walter was compelled to go off with the secret of Grace’s temporal salvation unimparted, and Lisle was left to blunder on.

Chapter 32

“Tarry a little, there is something else.”

After getting his bail accepted for Max Clifford, Archibald sent him to his sister, while he went to the house of Gilmore’s father, in the hope of eliciting something that might be available to Max’s defence. Mr Gilmore’s residence was in a fashionable street, and in one of those magnificent structures that the enterprise and intelligence of our citizens, and California gold, has added to the substantial wealth of our city. Certainly, neither intelligence nor any other analogous creative power builded the house of David Gilmore.

An Irish lad, in livery, opened the door for Lisle. He was struck with a blending of acuteness and stupidity in the lad’s face, not uncommon with his race. Lisle found Gilmore cautious and crusty; he declined listening to any particulars; said “that it was very onjust his family should be mixed up with a disgraceful business of that sort, merely because his son had the misforten to be in the same counting house with the young fellow who had committed the forgery. This country fellow had, he understood, been a wild lad from the beginning. He had led his son astray for a while, but he – the father – being of opinion that boys’ pranks was catchin, had removed his son from Beekwell’s, and since Ernest had quit there, their acquaintance had ended, and his son had been remarkable correct.”

After stating some facts in relation to the early and late intercourse of the lads at rather striking variance with the father’s assertions, Lisle frankly told him Clifford’s version of the presentation of the draft; and added, “that legal steps had been taken to confront the young men, and that he should prove at the trial of his client, that Ernest was not at home, as had been asserted, through the morning of the fraud, but that he had been distinctly recognized in Wall Street by more than one person.” The unhappy father had no quieting consciousness of his son’s uprightness, and he was evidently flustered. The affair did not seem so easily disposed of as before a powerful friend had appeared for Clifford. Upon Lisle asking, “if Mr Ernest was at home, to be allowed to speak with him,” Gilmore rang the bell, and the Irish lad who had admitted Lisle, came from the pantry, the door of which was ajar.

“What are you doing there, you rascal?” exclaimed his master. “Listening?”

“‘Listening!’ No indeed, your honor. I was just stopping quiet, not to be after disturbing the gentleman.” True to his Celtic blood, Pat’s invention was ready at need.

At Mr Gilmore’s bidding, he went in search of his son, and returned, saying, “Mr Ernest is not at home,” accompanying the assertion with a side glance at Lisle, which, to his quick perception, eliminated the not.

“It does not much signify,” he said to Mr Gilmore. “The examination of my client is deferred till tomorrow morning. The young men must then be confronted; and allow me to beg, that nothing may prevent your son being present, and punctual. He would be compromised by his absence; strong suspicions are afloat against him.”

“The evidence against your friend,” retorted Gilmore, “is too heavy to be toppled over by suspicions. My son will be present.”

As Lisle left the house, Patrick, bareheaded, followed him into the street, looking back and around to elude observation. “Did I hear aright?” he asked, “and is it young Mr Clifford, God help him, that’s in trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Stop a bit – your honor’s a gintleman; don’t be after going like a railroad. Tell me the name, plase, was on the nasty bit o’ paper.”

“Thomas Innis.”

“And how do you be after spillin’ it?”

“Spelling, do you mean?”

“The same, plase your honor.”

“Thom – ”

“Not Sint Thomas; faith and I was tached that at home.”

“Ah, Innis – I-n-n-i-s.”

“That’s the very one! Thanks to Him above,” cried Patrick, grinning wide his cavernous mouth, as if to let out a volume of joy.

“Pat!” screamed a voice from the area of Gilmore’s house, “you’re wanted.”

“Don’t scrame so unpolite, Bridget. You’ll hare from me,” he added to Lisle, and as he retraced his steps, he muttered, “that shall he if I lose my place. It was the poor lad himself saved my ould mother, and should not I give him a lift – why not?”

The Irishman’s promise made no impression on Lisle. He well knew the hot hearts and hasty sympathies of the Irish race, and merely inferred that listening to Max Clifford’s sad case, had turned the current of Pat’s toward him.

After a hard day’s work in their service, Lisle was obliged to go to his young friends at Steinberg’s, with but gloomy prospects for the next day. He had nothing to offer at Clifford’s examination, but the testimony of the heads of both the mercantile houses in which he had been employed, to his truth and uprightness. This was not enough to rebut the direct evidence against him.

He found Grace Herbert with Alice. The young women had bridged over the abyss of their long separation with many a pleasant memory, and Grace was casting that spell of enchantment over Alice which can hardly be defined, and certainly not resisted. Alice’s anxieties had been suspended for an hour, and even Max seemed like one suddenly awakened from a delicious trance, when the entrance of Archibald turned all their thoughts on the approaching examination in the Municipal Court.

Archibald proceeded to communicate the meagre result of the day’s investigation, and as he concluded, he asked Max if there were any foundation for the Irish lad’s interest in him?

Max modestly told the probable ground of it. He said, “that in one of his fast drives, with Ernest Gilmore, down the Third Avenue with a famous trotter, and a heavy bet at stake, Ernest drove against a woman, who proved to be this same Patrick’s mother. Her arm was broken, and she was otherwise badly bruised. Ernest drove the horse to the stable; he (Max) helped to convey the old woman to her shanty, and afterwards gave her, from time to time, what succor he could. Ernest was, as usual, out of pocket, but he proposed to make what reparation he could, and save himself from a prosecution by the injured party, by inducing his mother to take the lad, Patrick, who had just arrived a raw boy, into her service. ‘I’ll come round the old lady,’ that was his respectful mode of alluding to his mother; ‘she likes nothing better than training a fresh hand, if she can get him under price. Pat is a likely lad – she’s a trump at training, and when he gets on his livery he’ll do.’”

It may be matter of some surprise that any mistress of a Fifth Avenue palace should thus bestow her time and talents, but Mrs Gilmore had achieved her greatness by beginning as the “smart” and pretty daughter of a country innkeeper. She had married a New York shopkeeper, and by “slow, but not easy stages,” had arrived at her present position, with a carriage and liveried servants, and one only son; that son such as might be expected from the ambition, the examples, and the society of his parents; the paramount interest of the one, being the rise and fall of stocks – and of the other, ostentation at the least possible outlay.

Both Grace and Alice found ground for some vague expectation in the intimations of the Irish lad; to the young men they seemed without foundation. Women are not always wrong in kindling their hopes by their desires. To Alice’s quick and apprehensive observation, it was ominous of evil that Lisle seemed hardly to be conscious of Miss Herbert’s presence, and that when, at the sound of her carriage, she rose to go, he did not raise his eye from some papers he was examining. But when she said, “Mr Lisle, will it do, or will it not, for this poor little sister to go with her brother to the courtroom tomorrow?” his eye lighted as he turned it on her; he was about to reply – he hesitated.

“Oh, pray say yes, Archy,” said Alice; “poor Max will have no friend to stand by him; you, you know, will only appear as his counsel.”

“But, dear little Alice,” said Lisle, speaking to her as if she were still the petted child of their earlier days, “that miserable courtroom is no place for you, alone; if your mother – ”

“Alone!” interrupted Grace; “do you imagine I was so barbarous as to propose that? No, we have arranged it all – settled it together. I go with her as sister, mother, friend – one or all, as you please; and – stop, hear us through – not merely satisfied to be ‘strong-armed with conscience,’ like the lady in Comus,[A masque by John Milton] but we will go in strict deference to the judgment that may be supposed to emanate from the best society in such an anomalous case. My dear brother-in-law, Frank Esterly, late clergyman, will go with us; he is rueful enough just now to give us solemn countenance. Now tell us honestly, if you were balancing the evidence for and against this poor fellow, might not the presence of three friends be the feather to turn the scale – the last ounce on the back of the camel, to crush his opponent?”

“To me, Miss Herbert, it might be a blinding evidence, but our judges must be governed by precedent and statute; however, if you ladies have the courage, I make no opposition. We must give Max every possible chance.”

“Then tomorrow at nine, Alice, I will be with you,” said Grace; “and for once I will borrow my stepmother’s coach – we must invest ourselves in the respectabilities.”

The sun went with Grace, and night and dews came. When Lisle returned from putting her in the carriage, he found Max gloomily leaning his elbow on the mantel, and Alice standing drooping beside him. She hastily wiped away her tears. “Is the trial tomorrow final, Archy?” she asked.

“Yes – the grand jury was in session when Max was arrested, and immediately found an indictment against him.”

“It looks black as night,” said Max. “What were those papers you were looking at, Archy?”

“The draft you presented, which the officers at the bank very kindly permitted me to take possession of to compare the endorsement with your handwriting and Gilmore’s. I hoped the experts, to whom I submitted it, would detect a resemblance to Gilmore’s.”

“And they did not?”

“Not satisfactorily. They rather inclined to the opinion, that there was more resemblance to the characteristics of his hand than to yours; but their opinion was not strong enough to give value to their testimony.”

“Experts, indeed!” exclaimed poor Max, in a tone as sad as it was contemptuous. “Do you, Alice, sit down, and examine the papers; you are an ‘expert’ in everything.”

Alice sat down, and Archibald beside her, but even her keen perception availed nothing. “Oh, Max,” she said, “I could myself swear to this for your handwriting.”

“Then the game is up. I see there is no hope for me.”

“Oh, don’t say so, dear Max, till after tomorrow; nor then, even if they convict you – the very worst – yet we may get a pardon.”

“A pardon! I’ll not take a pardon from them; what has an innocent man to do with a pardon?”

Max, like most people of his temperament, sank as easily as he rose. He was now at the bottom of the abyss. Alice’s fertility in resources was not exhausted. “I have heard,” she said, “of a fraud detected by the manufacturer’s date on the paper.” She held the Innis draft to the candle. “There is neither date nor letter on this,” she added, sadly shaking her head.

Max bent his head to examine it. “But – by George! look Alice – Archy look! Don’t you see fine water-lines, a check all through the paper?” They did see it, and both looked to Max for an explanation. He said it was paper bought of an old Frenchman, Merceau, who lived in a garret in Nassau Street. “Gilmore bought all his paper of him. He was very fond of making errands there to see a pretty granddaughter of old Merceau; he used to take presents to her, and I told him it was not fair, and we had a little fight about it. It’s the same paper – I’ve twenty notes from the rascal written on it. That was a bright thought of yours, Alice! was n’t it, Archy?” Lisle cordially assented, and soon left the brother and sister to follow up, himself, the faint light that had dawned.

Clifford was present when the court opened the next morning. Lisle was on one side of him; his sister, Mr Esterly, and Grace, on the other. Ernest Gilmore soon after entered with his counsel, one of the ablest lawyers in the city.

Ernest’s friends were of the “fast” order, and having rather nervous associations with the purlieus of Courts of Justice, they did not find it convenient to be with him. His father stood upon his dignity, and would not give countenance to the complication of his son by appearing at the investigation. There was, however, no lack of an audience: the morning papers had given sufficient publicity to the affair, to fill the courtroom with curious idlers.

It was soon obvious which way the current of sympathy set. Human nature, unbiassed by selfishness or prejudice, is true to its instincts. Legal proof might fail Max at his need, but there was persuasive testimony in his favor in his fair candid brow, his clear open eye with its straightforward lookout, in the purity and sweet affectionateness of his countenance – an insurance against meanness of all sorts – and in his healthy aspect, and manly bearing. Ernest was tall, and thin, and with very handsome features. He was faultlessly got up by tailors, and barbers, and other professors of like “branches of learning;” but he had a certain pallor and tremulousness, that indicated his way of life, and the vulgarity of expression that inevitably follows it.

We have not the masculine pen of Dickens – nor, alas! the fathomless genius whereby he sounds the miry depths of humanity, or the opportunities and the observation that aid him in reproducing the infinite variety of life, with all its vitality, on his pages. Therefore we can only give the briefest summary of this morning’s proceedings, so critical to our dear friends. We shall not attempt to describe the confident hope that actually shone in poor Max’s face, as witness after witness from the houses of Beekwell & Co., and Smith & Eaton, deposed to the integrity of his character; nor Alice’s sweet trustful smile, showing even through the folds of her veil, as her eye met her brother’s, nor the gratulation of Grace Herbert’s brilliant face, nor the quiet assured faith of Esterly’s pale, fine countenance, nor how their hopes rose to the highest mark, as Lisle, with all the ingenuity of his profession, and the earnestness of his zeal, converted probabilities – so it seemed to them – to proofs.

But alas! for the old saying, “one story is good till another is told.” When the young ladies, in the bliss of their ignorance of the “glorious uncertainties of the law,” trusted it all settled in Max’s favor, and he – a greenhorn, as he afterward called himself – thought so too, the district attorney rose, and weakened the testimony to Max’s character, by producing witnesses to testify that he had been dismissed from Beekwell & Co.’s in consequence of frequent absences on “sprees,” and that he had been repeatedly seen with “fast” young men driving “fast” horses along the avenues. These irregularities the counsel argued, led to expenses not to be met by the ordinary receipts of a clerk. He granted everything that could be claimed from the general impression of the probity of the young man, and assented to all that it was reasonable to infer from the influences of his rural home. “It was evident,” he said, turning his eye to Alice, and pausing while it rested on her now pale and tearful face, “that they were of the most salutary and interesting nature, and he could but exclaim, as he looked upon the youth, with still the freshness and purity of his country life, on his unblighted countenance, ‘Would to God it were possible to exculpate him!’ But alas! how rapid is the work of depravation in the corrupting atmosphere of this city; before the bloom fades, the fruit is infected to the core! How small temptations mark the sliding scale! How short and rapid is the passage through the seemingly innocent indulgence that the gay and audacious temperament of youth craves, how short it is to crime! A proof of this dreadful acceleration from ‘deep to lower deep’ was striking in the unscrupulousness of Clifford in accusing a generous friend, a far graver offence than the hasty transgression, which might have been committed in a moment of despair,” etc., etc. He recurred to the evidence in relation to the paper bought of Merceau. “Doubtless the old man had, as he swore, sold that paper to Ernest Gilmore, and he, Merceau, alone had imported it from the manufactory in France. But Gilmore had, as Merceau admitted, been in the habit for two years of buying that paper, and what was more probable than that he had shared it with his friend to whom, as has been shown, he had, perhaps too lavishly imparted of his superior means, etc., etc. As to the argument drawn from the hue of the paper corresponding precisely with that of the last importation – a half ream of this, Merceau had testified to having sold to Gilmore within a few days – it was most futile. A sheet within a package, shut from the air in a writing case, would not be perceptibly changed in months. And finally,” he said, “he felt too much compassion for the young man, too much sorrow” – “for his family,” he would have added, but seeing that Alice, unable to sustain herself, had dropped her head on her brother’s shoulder, he paused, and eager to avert observation from her, he hastily concluded, saying that “it was unnecessary for him to dwell on the comparison unfavorable to his client, which had been instituted between the young men; they were associates and intimates, and it would require an acute analysis to detect their different degree of merit; and finally, the jury,” he said, “must decide against the defendant, there being nothing in the slight probabilities alleged in his favor to invalidate the fatal evidence against him in the plain handwriting of the endorsement of the draft.”

He sat down, and Esterly whispered to Grace that their verdict would doubtless be against Clifford, and that she had best withdraw her friend; but Alice, when the proposal was made, shook her head, “Oh, let me,” she said, “stay with him till the last minute.”

“Don’t be disheartened,” whispered Lisle, “we may – we must get a pardon.”

But poor Max was utterly disheartened. He felt the full force of the truth “that the difference of going just right and a little wrong in the commencement of the journey of life, is the difference between a happy home or a miserable slough at the end of it.” The ploughshare had uprooted his self-confidence, and humility was springing up. To him it did not now seem a slight departure from right, “a little wrong,” that by dangerous associates and selfish indulgences he had periled his own honor, and his mother’s and sister’s happiness. “Any punishment,” he thought, “is not too severe for me, if I could bear it alone.” But the thought of the dark shadow he had cast on his dear home unmanned him, and the handkerchief with which he hid his convulsed face, was drenched in tears.

At this moment a letter was passed over to Lisle. It was written on the coarsest paper, and folded not after the likeness of anything in heaven or earth. Within it was an old envelop resealed. He at first looked at the handwriting despairingly. The words were oddly formed, syllables as oddly parted, and capitals thrown in or left out, haphazard. He was about to thrust it into his pocket for a leisure moment, when certain names caught his eye, and he explored his way through the following lines with intense eagerness:

“dearsiranonord: – it was My mothers prares to the blessed Virgin that was thecosofit – that is my stain in the pantry, and unbenonst harin you tell of poor young Mr clifford, that same young gintleman savin My ould mother after she Comin all the wa from Ireland, she and The pig notthepig For that wascrished and squealin when Mr clifford – the Almighty blesshimfor that Same Took the little ould woman like a Fither in hes Arms in the Shanty and haledup the wunes of Body and hart fetchin the doctor and byin a Frish one that Is a pig for The dareould lady. so You see, sir, for Yees may want the testimoni I larned to rite a bit At home and wasafter larnin better here cos theboyssas a poor man may be a Poor prisident in yees country. so goin won nite to mr. ernest’s room with the cole I sese scitterd On the floor a letter sinde Thomas Innis, splindid riten and a sheetof paper All over rit Thomas Innis so sasiPat sasi this Is iligant for you to copy, and no loss to the Yung gintelman fortis But paper and Ink so I pitsitin my pock et handylike. But when He comesome his belrings like thunder And when I ansersit hes blazin and sashe Pat sashe wharsmy papers. the papers Is itsir sasi – Yes sashe the papers I lift – so To squinch the trouble sasi the Papers was after fallin on the flore and the ent nothin happind to em only i jist set the fire agoin widem – thin he cooldof and sashe niver Mind pat – go about yer bisnes and So i did and put in my Chist al the ritins every won and herethe Is. and if i took arite yer honors tauk to the ould gintelman the May do asarvice to Mister clifford Godbless him – and the dare ould ladis blessin and yer sarvans to the Ind of it – that’sme pat MacCormick.”

Lisle having mastered Pat’s epistle in an incredibly short time, tore open the envelop, and found, within, an autograph letter from Thomas Innis and a sheet of poor Merceau’s paper, on which Gilmore had practised, not only copying the name of Innis, but various words of the letter, of a chirography so clear and beautiful that it might have arrested a more clerkly eye than our friend Pat’s.

The smile that lifted all the clouds from Archibald’s face as he involuntarily looked toward the group of which Max was the centre, indicated good news. Lisle asked to be heard, and, after some controversy, having obtained permission of the court to offer some newly discovered evidence, he, with such explanations as were necessary, exhibited the documents enclosed by Pat. A murmur of satisfaction ran through the courtroom. Not a person there was silent, excepting those who were too suddenly happy for words, and the poor, already convicted wretch, on whose shoulder an officer had laid his hand. From the doorway came a voice silencing all others, crying out, “It’s I, Pat M‘Cormick, that writ the letter, and that same am here quite entirely ready to swear all that your Honors command.” Pat was admitted. If it is difficult for an Irishman to tell the truth, he can emit it, and Pat answered satisfactorily to examination, and cross-examination. Max Clifford was discharged, and Gilmore committed. Max had paid dearly for his follies; Gilmore was to pay, perhaps, his antecedents taken into consideration, too dearly for his crime. But perfect justice is not attainable at human tribunals, and there were other parties to the offences of these lads, not in anywise amenable there; not, perhaps, accused by their own consciences, but who will assuredly be found wanting, and receive a greater condemnation when summoned to the bar of the infallible judge.

There are thousands of young men in our city employed by merchants, and rich mechanics who acknowledge none but a business relation with them, who never, for a moment, consider the duty of looking after their morals, and their rightful recreations, which have so much to do with their morals. Had Beekwell & Co., or Messrs. Smith & Eaton extended a kind hand to Max Clifford; had they, in any mode, linked him into their social life, they would have saved him from imminent peril, and his family from a cruel heartache. Hundreds of young men are lost by similar neglect. That loss is fearful, but it may be found, hereafter, that the loss of the golden opportunity of doing good which Providence bestows upon the prosperous, is more fearful!

“Oh bright occasions of dispensing good,

How seldom used, how little understood!”

While these pages are going to press, we have heard a fact which we are proud to record. A hatter in Brooklyn has, during the past winter, employed an eminent chemist to lecture to his nine hundred workmen, twice a week, at fifty dollars a lecture. Rarely has one of the nine hundred seats of this little army been vacant. Better this, than the charge of the six hundred at Balaklava.

Chapter 33

“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”

Occupation, that mighty helper, and consolation of life, and the best occupation, thought, feeling, and doing for others, had been Grace’s friend in need. The few last days had been divided between her ministry to Augusta Tallis, and her solacing companionship with Alice. In a letter to her sister, in which she had given a brief history of Clifford’s affair, she says:

I find dear little Alice charming. She has all the freshness of her childhood, with a marvelous ripe judgment.

The opportunity,

she continues,

of serving my friends at this time, has been a providential boon to me. It has saved me from the weary task of pondering over the past. It has been well for Frank, too, to have his last leaden hours lightened and brightened by working for others; not the most cheerful work either, in poor Augusta’s case; but work that will help to cement the foundation on which the super-structure of her future life is to rest.

The funeral service for poor little Elise was most touching. There was no one present but the parents, Frank, and myself; no one to let in the world, and interrupt solemn thought, and impair holy feeling.

Augusta was so exhausted by the scenes of the last fortnight, that, though she has rallied since her husband’s return, she seemed, on the morning of the funeral, hovering between life and death; so pallid, tremulous, and faintish, that I despaired of her getting through with it, but after Frank came, she was stronger, and quite calm. I never was so impressed with the official power of a clergyman to ‘speak as one having authority.’

The little coffin was closed. I had laid a wreath of white rosebuds, and jasmins upon it; Augusta did not notice it. Her eyes

‘Were homes of silent prayer;’

and whether raised or cast down, were looking far beyond the material things that surrounded her, except once or twice when, with a consciousness of her husband’s arm being around her, she turned them on him with melancholy tenderness, as if in grateful recognition of his support.

Your husband, dear Eleanor, is worth all the efforts you are making for him. I never admired him more than yesterday. He did his office so unconventionally, so from his heart. He spoke, probing truth, as God’s commissioned messenger should, as his divine Master did; it was sharp as steel; but steel used for excision, and not to wound. I am sure he has done good to both husband and wife. Strange to say it; but I believe their child’s death will prove the greatest blessing of their life. She has fallen into the abyss that separated them, and it is fast closing up.

How strange of you, dear Nel, who have always done the right thing at the right time, to fall ill just at this moment: ‘it should have been hereafter.’ I did the best I could to supply your place, and went to the ship with Frank. Archibald Lisle was with us, and had provided Frank with all sorts of cheer and comfort; not the least among them, charming books and late reviews. This young man is a study to me. How in the world, in the midst of his busy professional life, can he do so many kind deeds that cost time and thought? It is true, as Uncle Walter says, that the busiest people do all the odd jobs of humanity. Why, Archibald Lisle gave into Frank’s hand six sheets of instructions closely written, mapping out his tour for him, telling him what to see, and – sagacious young man – what not to see. Recommending some great economies, and warning him against small ones as harassing, and interfering with the great objects of his voyage.

As I look back, dear Eleanor, I think I have been unconsciously influenced by the revelations of what seemed to me our family doom in the old green trunk. You remember the morning we spent over it. It filled me with an undefinable dread of that irremediable step on which a woman’s happiness is staked. You know I have had plenty of lovers, some too good for me, perhaps; but I bridled my affections, and they passed on. And while I thought I was warily watching my one persevering lover, he mastered my weaknesses. Well, since I have finished the game of a young woman’s life, won, not lost it, I have turned to ‘looking on.’ I see in my dear little friend, Alice, the predestined fate of Lisle; at present, she rushes into his arms, with nothing beyond the sweet confidence of an inherited and childish love. But she is now past eighteen, and something more is dawning. I see it in the quick mutation of her cheek, and in her sensitiveness to every look and word of his; and it is inevitable he should fall in love with her. If I do not much mistake, he has already. His manners with her are gay, cordial, almost caressing, but with nothing of that free underbred familiarity so disgusting in our ‘free and easy’ young men. My cheek burns as I recur to my monstrous vanity in telling you that I saw certain signs in Lisle that I might easily convert him into a lover. I think my judgment was bewitched. With me he was reserved and stately, with some occasional melting like a thaw in January. Now he is ‘more so.’ If ever in the intimate intercourse of the past week he was surprised into a relenting, he suddenly reverted to a sort of chronic disapprobation. I suspect he has observed my degrading entanglement, and been disgusted – no wonder. But courage! When he is Alice’s husband, I will try to win his friendship in the most comprehensive sense of that noble relation.

Dear Nelly, you’ll not care for these speculations when you are longing to hear of your husband; but you will forgive them, knowing I have always been addicted to what Shakspeare courteously calls ‘maiden meditation.’ I am coming to you on Saturday, with Frank’s last words and kisses for you and the children. He went off cheered by a promise I made (and will explain to you), that I will put my shoulder to your obstructed wheel.

When I returned from the ship to my own room at home, where I have not been since I first went to poor Augusta, I found on my table the trinkets which I left on that memorable evening scattered over the drawing room carpet. They were inclosed in a box, sealed and directed with Mrs Herbert’s pedantic nicety, and on the box was lying a note from that lady, which being characteristic, I copy for your edification:

My Dearest Grace, you are quite safe with Anne and me; neither facts nor surmises shall transpire. I shall, on this trying occasion, as I have ever endeavored, act the part of a mother by you. H. C. has been here more than once, and, I am happy to say, exhibits no unpleasant feeling. He has made no allusion to that evening. It was awkward, and he is ever taciturn, and we must allow for little peculiarities. Mrs Tallis’ sending those trinkets to you at such an unsuitable time is just a specimen of human nature. Death when it comes near arouses the conscience, and excited feeling will exaggerate. But married ladies should not trifle, and I hope and trust that Mrs Tallis will lay to heart the good lesson she has had. Afflictions do not spring out of the ground. H. C. has made no inquiries about you, and I advised Anne not to allude to your being at Mrs Tallis’, as I thought you acted a little too impulsively in going there, and, as I observed to Anne, lovers should be left to settle their own quarrels. Of course such a sensible woman as you are will forgive and forget, and only smile at Mrs T.’s pique. Your ever anxious and affectionate friend and mother,

S.H.

‘Oh, what fools these mortals be!’ Eleanor.

Here is John to tell me ‘the ladies have come in from their drive, and Mrs Herbert would like to speak to Miss Grace in her room.’ John smiled knowingly as he gave me the message, and as I came before the front window on the landing, ‘Has Miss Grace,’ he asked, ‘seen Mr Copley’s splendid new carriage?’ It was just turning from the door, the same equipage which he wrote to me he had ‘ordered for us.’ ‘It seems as if Miss Anne felt dreadful proud-like in Miss Grace’s place,’ said John, whether in sympathy for me, or contempt for us all, I could not quite tell, but the latter emotion these people, whom we call our ‘inferiors,’ must often feel for us.

Our stepmother looked at me with her beady eyes, as if she expected to fathom my heart – her line is too short for that. ‘You observed perhaps, dear Grace,’ she said, ‘that we came home in Horace Copley’s carriage?’

‘John called my attention to it,’ I replied.

‘Oh, I feared you might think it strange. But I have judged it important to keep up appearances, in any event.’ She paused, I made no reply, and she proceeded: ‘I have been really anxious about you, my dear, on many accounts. I have kept very secret your being at Mrs Tallis’, for you know the world will talk, and it would tend to widen this truly unhappy rupture, if Horace Copley should hear any remarks made about the rather striking suddenness of your friendship for Mrs Tallis.’ Again she paused, and again proceeded: ‘It is but paying a due respect to society to guard against its mistakes, and its possible censure.’ And so, dear Eleanor, she went on, and on, with a deal of ‘namby pamby stuff,’ and finding it did not bring me to the point, she said, in a slightly apologetic tone, ‘I have thought it judicious to keep up our relations with Horace Copley to prevent gossip – the world never gets matters quite straight; and whether the engagement is renewed or not, my object is to save your reputation, Grace, from all possible damage.’

‘The engagement will never be renewed,’ I said; ‘so pray, ma’am, go on, and keep up your relations with Mr. Copley, and extend them at pleasure. My reputation you may leave in my own charge. The world happily knows nothing of my engagement to Mr Copley, and that I believe is the only circumstance in my relation with him that could damage it.’

Mrs Herbert was not in the least nettled. She saw she had made a point in her game; the satisfaction of her soul shone through her face, in spite of her evident effort to look serious and sympathetic.

A box of Paris finery had just been unpacked, and its contents were strewn over the bed and chairs. Mrs Herbert coolly pointed out the new fashion of the hats, the new cut of the mantillas, and the ‘lovely trimmings, so French,’ of the dresses. Yesterday, at Augusta Tallis’ request, I had packed away, and sent away, similar properties of hers. The vision of this lovely mourner, eager to

‘Buy terms divine, in selling hours of dross –

Within, be fed; without, be rich no more,’

filled my mind’s eye, and I rather recoiled from this ‘Vanity Fair.’ Mrs Herbert gave her own interpretation to my indifference. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘forgive me; it really did not occur to me, that “if the course of true love had run smooth,” you would now be getting beautiful things for yourself; but when you have lived as long as I have, you will learn, my dear, that there is nothing so likely to happen as change.’

I bit my lips to keep them from answering this profound dip into life, according to my wont, with insolence or contempt. The ‘old Adam’ was fast getting too strong for the ‘young Melancthon,’ and I discreetly returned to my own apartment.

Now, my dear sister, is it worth my while to try and live longer with this woman? Her world is not our world. You might be equal to it, and in time you might win her over to serve God more, and mammon less; but I am not. I must, to borrow a feather from this owl of wisdom, ‘arrange my life judiciously, to preserve a due balance,’ which, I must confess, that with my habit of shifting all my feelings from one scale to the other, I never yet have done.

There has been a long series of petty aggressions and provocations on the part of my stepmother and her daughter, and of equally petty irritations and contempts on mine. I thought myself strong enough to overcome them; I am not. Change of air is the only cure for habits, as for chronic diseases. So, my dear Eleanor, I will come to you, and you and the children will bring out all that is good in me. By and by, when Uncle Walter comes home from his summer trip, we will arrange for him, too; and we will all, together, stand by May’s philosophy about the ‘little wooden house at Harlem.’

Grace proceeded to make arrangements for her new life; and first of all, she inscribed on the parcel containing Mrs Tallis’ jewels – blessed talismans to Grace – “Vouchers of a broken compact,” and enclosing, and directing it to “Horace Copley, Esq.,” she gave it into the hands of a trusty messenger.

The next day, after having assured Mrs Herbert that the world would take no exceptions to her removing her residence to Mrs Esterly’s house in the absence of her husband, she took a decorous leave of her stepmother and Miss Carlton, and they parted forever, with mutual satisfaction, as inmates of a common home.

Grace was shocked to find Eleanor in bed with a fever, and much more ill than she had supposed. She was suffering the consequence of too prolonged a strain upon her nervous system, for Eleanor had nerves, though they were sheathed in heavenly patience.

She had “waited on the Lord and been of good courage,” when her boy sickened and died. She had borne with unvarying cheerfulness the petulance engendered by the most wearying of all diseases; she had sustained alone the burden of domestic cares; and finally, when she had let her house to enable her husband to repair his health by a year’s travel in Europe, and had packed her family into the little Harlem box, and began her career of instruction, she broke down. Courage and energy had done their work; submission and patience were now to do theirs. She was like our precious perpetuals; when one blossoming of roses is perfected, another buds and goes on to maturity. The effluence of the virtues is truly the “odor of sanctity.”

“I have come just in time,” said Grace, kissing her sister’s hot cheek; “shall I take possession of your spare room?”

“My spare room! What a change from your spacious apartments. How you will miss not only elegances, Grace, but comforts.”

“Eleanor, are you turning world’s-woman? Do you remember ‘how much better is a dinner of herbs,’ etc. – must I quote Scripture to you? I am not yet one of those who ‘can spare the necessaries of life, but not the luxuries.’ You and your children are to me ‘the necessaries;’ your illness seems to me most opportune!”

“Opportune! Could anything be more ill-timed?”

“To me, Eleanor, it does not seem so. I wanted this seeming cloud, this providential shower, to nourish the good seed just dropped into my heart, that it may spring up and grow before the thorns – the natural product of the soil, Eleanor – choke it. Perhaps you do not know it is one thing to form good resolutions, and another to keep them. Hitherto there has been a division of labor between us; I have formed them and you have kept them.”

“Oh, Grace!” exclaimed Eleanor, with protest in her voice.

“Now,” proceeded Grace, “you must leave the doing to me. Dear, good Cousin Effie will take care of the children, and I will go daily to town and give your music lessons. I shall not be half so good a teacher as you are, for I have neither your method nor your patience; but I am a more brilliant performer, and therefore shall please the mammas, and will try to practise your sweet patience, and so please your pupils, who will be sure to test that virtue.”

“Come, Grace, come!” called out May Esterly, impatiently, “and look out of your own dear little window, and see the violets that are blowing out on my garden bed, and ever so many birds without any cages, on the trees, and Harlem river is only a little way off, and if you look very sharp, you can see the cars passing. Oh, aren’t you glad you are never going back to live in that old big house in Bond Street?”

“I am, May, I am!” replied Grace, and with a glee almost equal to the child’s, she ran away to partake the ever fresh pleasures of childhood.

And thus Grace Herbert, the observed of observers who, by uniting fashion to beauty and accomplishments, was perhaps the most admired and the most envied young woman in all our “Vanity Fair,” renounced a marriage which would have added to her position the brilliancy of fortune, deliberately left a life of elegant ease and most ladylike indulgence, to live in a very humble suburban house, and earn a frugal living for her sister’s family, by giving “lessons in music.” Whether she were elevated or degraded by this step, must be left to the judgment of her peers.

Chapter 34

“I come with joyful tidings; we shall part no more.”

Mapleton is, or was – our to-days are very unlike our yesterdays – a secluded village in New England. It lies in a hill and lake country with intervening valleys and meadows that are enriched by the spring freshets with alluvial soil. A railroad now skirts the valley, but at the epoch of our story the simplicity of rural life was in no way invaded. There was no monster hotel; only a two-storied inn, with its traditions of “the Revolution,” “Shay’s war,” and a flaming ghost that once haunted its precincts. The “dollar” was not yet “almighty” in Mapleton, but such things as contentment, mental accomplishment, social respect, and self-respect were there held superior to it and independent of it. No city-earned fortunes ruffled its quiet surface, and – oh, blissful days! – no city bees broke the silence of its summer shades.

The village street runs parallel to Lily Pond, a bit of water some six or seven miles in circumference. Lily Pond may it remain, in spite of the more dainty parlance of the present time, and in spite of its ambitious rechristening as Lake Bona Vista, by Colonel Donalphonso Hart, a return volunteer from the Mexican war, who illustrated Mapleton by his nativity. The indigenous name of this lovely bit of water indicates the lotus that profusely adorns its bosom in the month of August, shooting up its long flexile stems, unfolding its white petals, with a pink tint as delicate as an infant’s blush, and breathing out the rich odors it seems to have inhaled from the voluptuous sweets of summer.

Mapleton is the oldest village in the county. The beauty of its position was accidental for, its founders being true sons of the Pilgrim Fathers, like them eschewed the quality of beauty as if it were a device of the wicked one. Throughout New England the Puritans turned their backs upon the sweet South and its cheerful sunshine, facing their houses to the cold blasts of the North, as they did their tempers to the rigors of life. So it came, that the shores of Lily Pond that looked to the east and south with their charming variety of rock, and woodland, and flowery turf, were abandoned to unseemly barns, and slovenly yards, into which kitchens and sheds opened, and that the houses were built haphazard on either side a wide street winding in parallel line with the winding shore; the west side being preferred for building, as highest, and driest, and as commanding wider fields of pasture, grain, and woodland, intervening between it and the mountain barrier of the township. Civilization had, however, begun its work in Mapleton. The native taste of some of its people was cultivated; a few had traveled, and they were beginning to adorn their rural homes with filial love and reverence, the reverence attaching itself to old things, the love creating new beauties. Creeping roses sheltered and adorned the bared trunks of old trees, Virginia creepers shot over old barns, and honeysuckles, and the native clematis, perfumed and graced old porches. Fences were removed, yards became “lawns,” shrubberies were set, patches of flowers bloomed out from the greensward, gravel walks were laid out, piazzas erected, and the whole screened from the cold north and envious east wind by thick plantings of our native hemlock. All honor be to the women of Mapleton, who, by their “Married Ladies’ Cemetery Association,” and their “Young Ladies’ Flower Committee,” hastened on this rural millennium.

Alice Clifford’s home was at the southern extremity of the village, overlooking the lake and near its outlet, and so placed in relation to it, that when the slant beams of the sun touched the stream, it could be seen here and there, for many a mile, gliding through meadows, and stealing around high wooded hills. But (like all the masculine gender) it disappeared from Mapleton so soon as, fed by mountain-rills, it attained its full stature, and could no longer be recognized for the brook that, studded with anemones and violets, issued from Lily Pond.

Mrs Clifford’s house was the largest and best in the village. It had been in her husband’s family for three generations, and thereby had a remote antiquity and extraordinary traditional interest in a country where the second generation builds its houses in Ohio, the third in Minnesota or California, and the fourth – heaven knows where. It was at the close of an August day, just as the day was fading into twilight, and the delicious coolness of our northern summer evenings was revitalizing the air, that Archibald Lisle arrived at Mapleton, and approached Mrs Clifford’s. He stared around him, confused by the grouping of familiar and unfamiliar objects. A young man drove the coach, whom he recognized as having been a chore lad at his friend’s; now he was the proprietor of a small livery establishment. “I guess you don’t hardly mistrust where you are,” he said to Archy, as they entered a narrow avenue winding through a wood; “Mis’ Clifford’s girl has had the modeling of the old place,” he said, “and she is not a fool by a long shot; but making this – a-venue they call it – through the grove, when there was a broad road, straight as a die, so that you could drive right to the front door, in the darkest night, was a notion. To go dodging round these trees – she would not have one cut down – why it’s – well (pausing) – I should say it was double the distance it was by the old road, and so lonesome and confusing. But it’s a slick sight here,” he added, his voice cheerily changing, as they emerged from the wood and saw Lily Pond reflecting the rose-tinted sky; and the heavy cloud just lifted like a black curtain from the horizon, permitting the last rays of the sun to shine out and kindle, as with a flame, the topmost branches of the trees and the summits of the opposite hills. Archibald looked in vain for the broad front door, that, ever wide open, seemed to speak a smiling welcome. “There’s no getting in at the old spot,” said his conductor; “go round the corner of the house, and you’ll find a kind of a fandango there.”

Lisle eagerly went forward and found a picturesque porch, whose door was open with the old look of hospitality. He entered and passed through a passage, not into the “dwelling room” that lived in his dear remembrance, but into a modernized apartment with a bay window of plate glass, opening upon a terraced garden extending to the lake.

More in keeping with this novel aspect than were the accustomed inmates, was the graceful figure that rose from the piano at his entrance. “I am very glad to see you, Mr Lisle,” said Grace Herbert, extending her hand, “and sorry that I am the only one of your friends here to welcome you – but don’t look so disappointed (did Archibald look disappointed?) – you were not expected for an hour. Mrs Clifford has gone to the village on business, Max is out shooting, and Alice,” she was putting her hand on the bell to ring for a servant to call Alice, when a sound was heard, more like the rush of a startled bird, than a footstep, and Alice, gliding down stairs, entered, her face radiant with a welcome sweeter than words could make it. “Oh, how glad my mother will be to find you really here, Archy! and I am so glad; and weren’t you,” Alice faltered, at a loss for the right word, and then added, not quite as if she had found it, “surprised to find Miss Herbert here? I meant you should be, Archy.”

“I certainly had no expectation of finding Miss Herbert here,” he replied, with a slight embarrassment, and averting his eye.

“Ah, Mr Archy,” thought Alice, “you are as glad as you are surprised, though you try hard not to appear so;” and then observing his abstracted look, she said, “I am afraid it does not seem like home to you.”

“Oh, yes, Alice, your mother’s home will always be and seem home to me; but I confess to a lingering love of the old look. I miss the many doors whose slamming and banging were pleasant to my boyish ears – the ‘entry door’ and the ‘bedroom door,’ and the ‘t’other-room door,’ and, above all, the old cupboard that Arthur and I used to ransack and rifle; but here,” he added, turning to the window, “here it is unchanged – here, the same sparkling ripple on Lily Pond; every ‘pulse of wind’ and wave is the same as when we were last fishing on it; I can recall every indentation of the shore that Arthur and I followed, mapping out our future; I can point out the trees that we climbed, and the trees we scored together – grown very little taller,” he added, turning his moistened eye to Alice, “like you.”

“Take care, Mr Lisle,” said Grace, “you are on dangerous ground. Alice is sensitive on the point of height. I quote to her my Uncle Walter, who says ‘the nicest things are done up in the smallest parcels,’ and I promise her height shall reach to the stature of the largest heart.”

“But you were a tall child,” said Lisle. “I well remember thinking so when you stood on the ‘high rock,’ your little figure relieved against the sky, shouting to Arthur and me to return, as we were going out for an evening’s fishing, and take you into the boat.”

“I remember it so well; and what a bad child I was, throwing my basket of berries into the lake in my vexation.”

Both Archibald and Alice were silent at this point, but both remembered that he kindly rowed back, took her in his arms, coaxed and caressed her into good humor, and carried her home; and Alice remembered that she did not much regret, when fondled in his arms, the loss of the rowing.

Again Archibald recurred to the landscape. “There,” he said, “is our dear old picnic ground, and the log bridge. But what is that spire coming up over Simmons’ hill, a church?”

“Oh, no, that is a sawmill built since you were here; the very thing the village is in a turmoil about.”

“You have made a charming transformation,” said Lisle, after another survey of the premises, “by removing the old barn, making this new approach, and grading the ground to the shore. How have you managed it? – your mother so detested changes.”

“And she detests them just as much as ever, but she says, ‘Youth is stronger than age,’ and so she yields to the inevitable. I shall not tell you by what potent charms and spells it has been done. I shall wish it all back in the old way, if it does not seem like home to you. But there comes my mother.”

Archibald sprang forward to meet her.

“Home is in your mother’s face, Alice,” said Grace; “what a harvest radiance it has. I wonder if another generation will show such faces as your mother’s and my Uncle Walter’s, so full of what the poets call ‘autumnal beauty,’ the traces and records of their beneficient day.”

“I don’t know,” said Alice, murmuring her words, as if she were thinking aloud, rather than speaking; and while intently watching the meeting of Archibald and her mother, she added, “People never are what you expect, even those you feel most certain of.”

Alice was not addicted to talking riddles. Grace looked at her open face, trying in vain to penetrate her meaning.

“She is delighted to see Archy,” continued Alice, “that’s all right; she is almost as much overcome with joy, as when I brought Max home. How her gladness shines out through her tears, like the sun through a shower – dear mother!”

There was something in Alice’s accent, and the shake of her head as she made this exclamation, which implied that “dear mother” had said, or felt something that crossed Alice’s hope or purpose. Did her quick eye detect the expression of dissatisfaction that shot over her mother’s face, as she glanced her eye from Lisle to Miss Herbert? She could not have heard her say, for she hardly spoke above a whisper,

“You should have been our only guest for the next month, Archy; it is so long since I have seen you.”

An epoch that was to color all Lisle’s future life had now arrived; and that our readers may judge him leniently, they must know the misconceptions on which he is about to act. As he was uninformed of Miss Herbert’s relations with Copley beyond the point of her engagement to him, he was perplexed by its prolonged secrecy, and could see no good reason for it. He had not met Grace since the day of Esterly’s departure. He had repeatedly ridden out to Harlem to visit his friend’s wife, but had been finally discouraged by the uniform answer to his inquiries “that she did not yet leave her room.” Once he had asked for Miss Herbert at her stepmother’s house, and was told that she was at her sister’s, without a hint of her permanent abode there. The complete suspension of social intercommunication in New York during the hot months, accounts for his not hearing the fact, the nine days’ wonder of her fashionable friends, of Grace having become a paid teacher of music; or their gossiping conjectures in relation to the apparent conclusion of Copley’s devotion to her.

After Archibald withdrew for the night, he sat down by his open window, and with his eye resting on the moonlit lake, he gave free course to his thoughts, much as follows: “Keeping this engagement secret must be some arrogant whim of Copley’s. The fellow always delighted in silence and darkness, as if by investing himself in mystery he could become a demi-god. An unmotived secret must be repulsive to Grace Herbert’s nature, as I once imagined it. Fortunate for me that dear old man told it to me; it was a stunning blow, but it disenchanted me. I ceased to worship from the moment I knew she had declined to his level. And her content seems so absolute, as if, instead of this hateful compromise with the world, she had made safe and noble anchorage, not a venture out at sea. If she were but infatuated; but she is calm and satisfied – satisfied with Copley!

“How quietly happy she seems; no more those alternations of spirit and gentleness, of pride and softness, those sudden mutations that, in my blind idolatry I thought so charming, ‘each a lovelier wonder than the last.’ Now she seems so self-forgetting, her brilliancy so softened, like sunshine through a curtained window, in such musical accord with the simplicity of this household, that if I did not know beyond the possibility of doubt that she had trafficked herself away in the market of weak and vulgar women, I should fall back into my old slavery; my old idolatry.”

By degrees, as his eye continued on the familiar scenes of his boyhood, his thoughts reverted to Arthur Clifford, and through that medium, to Alice. Lisle had too sound a mind, or rather too sound a faith, to fall into the bad scepticism which doubts the power of any woman to resist seduction to her vanity, or temptation to her poor worldly ambition. The individual had fallen, not the sex.

“Dear Arthur!” thought Lisle, “Alice is just such a sister as you would have desired – is she not all that a lover could ask? Would not ninety-nine men in a hundred prefer her with her not too much, nor too little intelligence, her cheerfulness and all the sweetening qualities for everyday life, to Grace Herbert; and shall I be the hundredth to shiver in the shadow of the greatness that is not for me? When poor Letty died, I reproached myself for having forgone a certain and attainable blessing for one unattainable. I am tired of my isolation.” And then he thought, as he had often thought, with a shudder, of the weary waste of life in a boarding house, of the oozing out of his best affection, of the providence that had from his youth bound him up with the Clifford family, of the long-continued inestimable affection of Alice’s mother, of the impulsive – love? No, Archibald would have blushed at that presumption – affection Alice had already manifested for him; and he came to a decision, and was struggling to fortify it against old prepossessions, when his bachelor meditations were interrupted by cautious footsteps on the stairs. Some one entered the room next his, shut the door, and burst into sobbings that it seemed could no longer be suppressed. Soon after, Mrs Clifford, whose ears were open day and night to the wants of her household, came to the relief of the sufferer, for relief it appeared. The sobbing ceased, and a dejected voice was heard in response to the soothing tone of Mrs Clifford, which continued far into the night and long after Archibald became oblivious of his neutral-tinted future, and was dreaming of his present bright surroundings.

Chapter 35

“There are two republics: a great one, which is human nature; and a less, which is the place where we were born.”

When the breakfast bell rang the next morning, and while the family were assembling, Alice brought in her arms into the breakfast room a pale, sickly child, and seated her between her mother and herself. The little girl had rather a pleasing face, but spiritless, except for her large dark eyes of singular intelligence. She was four years old, or thereabouts, and from her helplessness (her lower limbs were paralyzed), or from some unknown cause, she seemed to be an object of special interest. Mrs Clifford, as she took her seat at the head of the table, said, cheerily, “Ah, Daisy, is the world right side up this morning?” and Alice’s eye moistened, as the little girl stretched her arms to her and said, “Give me one kiss for breakfast, my owny, dony Alice.”

“Why, who is this?” asked Archibald of Max.

“You must not ask me,” replied Max, in a low tone; “that’s a secret that mother and Alice have not trusted me with.”

Lisle’s question was heard, and Max’s answer guessed, but neither were noticed, and Lisle, taking the seat allotted to him, next the child, instinctively put his hand on one of her long tresses that, as she shook her head, fell over his sleeve, “Take care!” she said, “don’t tumble my curls; my Alice made them so smooth round her finger.”

“But why do you shake your head, and toss your curls round at such a rate, Daisy?” asked Max.

“I shake it at Amy, ’cause she has put no saucers on the table for the raspberries.”

“Shake away, little goddess, you are quite right. I really wish, mother, you would speak to your ne plus ultra, Amy, about her shortcomings.”

“Speak to your sister if you please, my son, she set the table this morning; but make no remarks before Amy,” continued Mrs Clifford, lowering her voice, and glancing at a “parlor girl” who entered in answer to Max’s hasty ring; “and I wish, my son, you would not ring the bell in that way.”

Max laughed, as he said aside to Archibald, “My mother always rings the bell as if she were afraid the servants’ feeling would be hurt if they heard it.”

“Don’t you remember Amy?” asked Alice, as the girl disappeared in the pantry to repair her young mistresses’ omission.

“Amy! Is she the little girl whom your mother brought home with a batch of children, while she watched over their mother, ill with a typhus fever? How could I recognize that little buxom child in this tall, solemn young woman – June in November?” He rose, as the girl returned to the table, and giving her his hand, “Don’t you remember me, Amy?” he said. “I hope it is not the custom at Mapleton to forget old friends?”

“No, sir,” replied Amy, coldly; “I guess it is not much so.” Amy’s spirit was right, but she had the discourteous manner that pervades New England, we are sorry to say, from highest to lowest, and appears in most repulsive ungraciousness in the medium class that, cherishing the right to social equality, is jealous of manifesting any deference that may possibly be interpreted into a confession of inferiority of rank. Amy held, in Mrs Clifford’s family, that anomalous position, defined by the general term, “help.” The relation is scarcely known beyond the rural districts of New England; and now that the Celts monopolize domestic service, and the term “servant” is used, without fear or reproach, it will soon become traditional. It is in such relations as that of Mrs Clifford to Amy, and to her other humble friends in her rural district, that the most perfect working of our republican institutions is to be seen; and rarely is it to be seen out of New England.

But it is hard for young people to divest themselves of a certain respect for what they consider the marks of “genteel life.” “Alice,” said Max, “you are spoiling Amy; why, in the world, should you set the table for her?”

“I could hardly do less, Max, when mother went out in the dew, in her stead, and picked those raspberries that you seem to be so mightily enjoying.”

“Oh, that’s mother’s way, to spoil all her servants. Can you imagine such an absurdity, Miss Herbert, as letting a servant sleep, and getting up and doing her work?”

“Yes, I have seen like anomalies in my sister Eleanor’s ménage; but, Max, I must confess to knowing ladies who would as soon think of building a nest for a bird, as of doing the kind turn Alice has done this morning for Amy.”

“And would probably be quite as capable of the one service as the other,” said Mrs Clifford, looking approvingly, and with surprise at Grace, of whom, as a New York bred lady, she was still distrustful. “Is it true, Miss Herbert,” she added, “as I often hear alleged, that women in our towns live in hotels, to escape the trouble of training and governing domestics?”

“I hear so,” said Grace, shrugging her shoulders; “but really I know little of that genus.”

“The more gracious your estate, Miss Herbert,” said Lisle. “I have known something of the way of life of such residents in our hotels. I have had two slander suits arising out of it; and nothing can be more inane, gossiping, and deteriorating than it is; ‘altogether inconvenient,’ as Parson Leland said of the infernal regions.”

“Capital!” exclaimed Max; “I know all about it. I spent one week, just for the fun of it, with that rascal Gilmore at the – what do you call it? the crack hotel in New York; and the ladies would come to breakfast in their – what do you call them, Alice? Oh, peignoirs; and their skirts flounced and embroidered up to their waists; and they wore diamond earrings, and sparkling bracelets, and embroidered pocket handkerchiefs, and all sorts of folderols, in the morning. Don’t you call that vulgar, mother?”

“Yes, Max; and perhaps even you think it more vulgar than setting the table for Amy?”

“Yes indeed, mother. I had rather Alice would wash, scrub, and bake – do anything at home, all her life, than live as these superfluous women do. Some of them, I guess, began life with washing and scrubbing.”

“Nothing is more probable,” said Grace. “It is the sudden fortunes that come upon people unprepared for them, by education or association, that vulgarize our society.”

“And yet,” said Mrs Clifford, “there are those who become suddenly rich who are gentlemen and ladies by inspiration or instinct.”

“Yes,” said Archibald, “and I have known some who remain poor, and still are gentlemen by virtue of a refined nature. My father was so in the highest sense of that term, and in every exigency, though he continued to the end of his life to work with carpenter’s tools.”

“Your father a carpenter, Archy!” exclaimed Max.

A smile went round the table at Max’s amazement at finding the friend born of “low degree” whom he looked up to as gentle by birth as well as by all manly gifts and accomplishments. His mother was annoyed, and not a little mortified at her son’s false notions; but wisely reflecting that observation and experience are better teachers than admonition, she reverted to the subject under discussion. “Nothing strikes me more,” she said, “than our childish impatience with the tasks Providence assigns us. These, willing, strong, warm-hearted Irish, adult children, are sent to our hearthstones to be taught. We, those of us I mean in medium condition, are qualified teachers. We understand the economies and morals of domestic life, and, with the zeal of missionaries, and at the cost of but a tithe of their labors and sacrifices, we may raise these semi-barbarians to the level of our civilization.”

Mrs Clifford seems not to have been enlightened by the oracle of a late acute English traveler in the United States, who opines that our ladies will be driven into Mormonism by the perplexities of domestic service!

Our friend Max belonged to a family where a gentleman was made in the old slow fashion, by at least three generations, and he was in the presence of one of the few representatives of that “ancient and honorable,” and almost forgotten race, an “old family;” and therefore we forgive him the dullness of not seeing the absurdity of attaching importance to hereditary gentility in a country where the “lucifer-match” maker, or the medicinal panacea patentee of this year, may be of the millionaire aristocracy of the next; and where the son of the humblest mechanic, or even of the day laborer, starts with advantage from a “free academy” in the race for the highest goals in the country.

But as we should agree with our young friend that there was too much of indulgence in a household where the maid was permitted to sleep while the mistress did her work – a prodigious exception to all known usages – we must communicate in brief, what Mrs Clifford imparted in detail to her guests at the first opportunity.

The sawmill which Lisle, at a slight glance from the bay window, had mistaken for a church, belonged to one Martin Seymour, a thrifty young man in Mapleton, who, in despite of suggestive red hair, and a kindling expression, possessed a kindly, quiet temper. He was Amy’s cousin on the maternal side, and in rustic phrase, he was, from childhood, “attached to Amy.” Amy requited his affection, kind for kind, but the course of their true love was roughened by her father, who had accumulated grudges against the Seymours. He and Martin’s father married twin sisters, who, it was supposed, would divide equally the heirship of their father’s farm; a fair rural property. But the parent’s will gave five-sevenths to Seymour’s wife, alleging that her husband was “slack,” whereas Goddard was “forehanded.” Goddard looked upon this as a mere pretext of partiality, naturally maintaining that the very fact of his having become “forehanded” qualified him to best husband his father-in-law’s estate.

We must confess, in dear New England, to an excess of that quality which expands in noble minds to bold speculation and generous enterprise, but is in our rustic population a hateful greed of gain; it is the blot on our escutcheon, the moth and rust that eat into our pure gold. It is this that plucks away the smile from labor, furrows the brow with care, and overshadows all the cheerful charities of life. But grasping as we are, we have few hoarders or spendthrifts; and it must be said in extenuation of this most repulsive characteristic, that the money gained by ceaseless toil and care is transmuted into education, invested in some improvement in husbandry, or bestowed on – or more often bequeathed to – a favorite charity.

Goddard’s was an exceptional case; he loved money for money’s sake; to him it was the motive and the recompense. He had long had his eye upon the mill site, and had carefully accumulated and set apart dollar by dollar for its purchase; his “castle in the air” was the mill to be erected there, and its productive results were daily calculated. Avarice is a most unsocial passion, and Goddard, like most avaricious men, was cautious and secretive, and did not disclose, till Seymour bought the mill site, his long-cherished purpose of possessing it. “But providence,” he said, “was set against him. Seymour’s boy had overreached him; and,” he added, and Goddard spoke no idle words, “he should live to repent it.” Poor Martin, who had innocently provoked this ire, “not surmising,” as he said, “how Uncle Nat felt about the mill site till after all the street knew it,” experienced its most cruel consequence in a mandate issued to Amy, forbidding any further “keeping company” with her lover. Amy obeyed to the letter.

Early in the morning, before Lisle’s arrival in Mapleton, Seymour, on going into his mill, discovered an obstruction in the works, so placed, that, as he said, “if he had not seen it before setting the mill a going, he should have been plunged into eternity, without a minute’s warning.” A plunge, even so sudden, would hardly have found Seymour’s soul “unanointed.” Without reflection upon causes and agencies, he rushed forth and imparted to his workmen the peril he had escaped.

“It’s Goddard’s work!” one exclaimed.

“It can be nobody but Goddard,” they all responded. And in spite of Martin’s earnest injunction, rumor, that oldest of telegraphs, had carried the news through the village before noon; and before evening, a complaint was entered against Nathaniel Goddard, and he was brought before a magistrate. At this stage of proceedings, Seymour appeared at Mrs Clifford’s, and instead of stealing along the path to the back door – his usual approach – he boldly entered at the front portal, and heated and flurried, begged to speak in private with Mrs Clifford. After telling the story of the morning to her,

“Everything is going against Uncle Nat,” he said; “he was seen about the premises last night, and there is more than one witness to testify to his threats against me – poor man! The only chance for us is to get a surety for his future good behavior. Now, Mrs Clifford, if you will offer that, I don’t care what they ask, up to anything I own or can earn, I will secure you.”

“But, Martin, my friend, if you will be so noble to your uncle, why not offer the security in your own name?”

“Oh, ma’am, you don’t begin to know Uncle Nat; he hates me more than he loves money. Why he’d rather die in State prison – and it’s a State prison offence – than be helped by me. Here is my bond to you, ma’am; Lawyer Flint has written it, and I have signed it.”

“But it will seem very odd, Martin, that I should assume such a risk.”

“Excuse me, ma’am. The street never thinks any kind deed of Mrs Clifford’s, odd, be it ever so great, or ever so small, a shower or a sprinkle.”

“Thank you, Martin; but really I don’t fancy making myself a fine bird with your fine feathers.”

“Most people,” said Seymour, “are dreadful afraid of seeming worse than they are; I never saw one but you, ma’am, that shyed seeming better. Don’t scruple; think of poor Uncle Nat’s folks, think of –Amy.”

“Ah,” thought Mrs Clifford, “sits the wind in that quarter?” And smiling, and glancing significantly at Seymour, she hesitated no longer, and while he went another way, she went to the magistrate’s office, and when Lisle arrived, she was transacting the business that enabled Goddard to return to his own house, that evening, at liberty.

Amy was apprised of the proceedings at the village court, and on the same evening she went to her father’s house to ascertain the condition of affairs there. She found her mother in great distress, moaning over her little boy, her “youngest,” who seemed in extremity from an attack of croup.

“Oh, I don’t mind this,” she said, as Amy took the boy from her arms; “he’ll die, of course, Benny will, but that seems nothing; he’d better die, we’d better all die, than live to the disgrace that’s coming on us.”

“Mother!” cried Amy, “don’t talk so; it’s all fixed; father is out of trouble.”

“Yes, out today, Amy; but he’ll be in tomorrow.”

“My father!” said the little fellow, struggling hard to speak, and looking up fondly at the mention of his name.

“Poor little man! how he loves father; where is he, mother?” In her fright about the child, she had not before missed her father.

“Gone,” replied the mother, “gone to the mill, I know, for he had his set look on, and I could no more stop him than I could stop the mill race.”

“And did he go, mother, when Benny was breathing so?”

“No; that might have stopped him. He was out of call when Benny waked choking.”

In a breath Amy had caught up her shawl and rushed out into the night. She went, by a cross-cut, through a dark and tangled wood, to the mill. The moon had not risen; the stars gave a faint light as Amy, emerging from behind the interlacing branches of the trees, described a man just entering the mill. She sprang forward, grasped his arms with both her hands, and cried, “Father! what is father here for?”

He shook her off, and said, fiercely, “What are you dogging me here for?”

“I am not dogging you, sir,” she answered, with habitual respect; “mother thought you might be here.”

“D–n her! what business had she to think about it?”

“Don’t, please, to speak so, father; mother is in trouble: Benny has got one of his croups.”

“Benny?”

“Yes, sir; and it seems as if he would die. I never saw him choke so; he tried to speak, and all I could make out was ‘Father! father!’ Oh, do go to him, sir, and I’ll go for the doctor.”

Amy well knew the motive she urged – Goddard’s love for his “youngest” was the one star shining through a pestilent congregation of vapors. The poor man said not another word, but turned from the mill, and rushed through the wood. This time love was stronger than hate.

Amy did as she said. She went for the doctor; and it was not till after she had again been at home, and seen the child relieved, and sleeping in his father’s arms, that Lisle had overheard her giving vent to her full heart by sobs and tears in her own room. She was quieted by the ascendancy of her beloved mistress over her; but she was not reassured. She knew the hopeless determination of her father’s temper, and believed that the evil day, however deferred, must come. The antagonisms of love and hate, generosity and covetousness, enact their tragedies even in humble rural life.

Chapter 36

“Oh! how full of briars is this working-day world!”

Grace was sitting by a table with her open portfolio upon it, and a pencil in her hand; and so she had been sitting for a half hour without making a stroke with it, and lost in a reverie, when Lisle joined her. Whether her start and the blush that suffused her cheek as he entered, indicated that he had any part in her reverie, must be left to conjecture. Lisle asked “if the charming country about them had induced her to make any sketches since she came to Mapleton?”

“A few,” she replied, “of the loveliest objects here. These are my best sketches from nature,” she added, taking several from her portfolio, and giving one to Lisle; “perhaps I think so because I love my subject, and on that score it should find favor with” – you was on her lips, but she mended and extended her phrase, and added, “with everyone of this household. You see I have sketched from life,” she continued, as Archibald, with a most admiring expression, gazed at the drawing, murmuring, “How like! how graceful! how beautiful!”

“Nothing,” said Grace, “has struck me more in Alice than the patience and sweetness of her devotion to Daisy, a most exacting, fretful, exhausting child. I could not do any justice to my subject by a mere pencil sketch, but imagine Alice as I saw her. She was cutting flowers from the tall shrub beside the porch, when she discovered a bird’s nest, and called to Amy to bring the child out that she might see it. She had her garden scissors in one hand, as you see, and her little hoe in the other; but oh, dear! the sketch gives no idea of the picture she was, except, perhaps, of the grace of her attitude, as she put aside the branches with her hand – thanks to her for the pretty model – and her sweet smile; I have got that, have I not?”

“In perfection!” replied Lisle, with enthusiastic emphasis. One could not tell whether it were the artist or the subject he most admired.

“You must tax your imagination, Mr Lisle, for the coloring; you know her garden hat, and can imagine how beautifully her heightened color contrasted with its ivy wreath, and the deep green ribbon with which she ties it. Here is another sketch that I like better, as it exhibits more impressively the patience to which I have nothing akin, and which, therefore, perhaps, strikes me as preternatural. Poor little Daisy was more out of humor, more impish than usual, and Alice, after exhausting all other resources, sat down on the floor beside her, and suffered her to pull out her comb, and unbraid, maul, and tangle her hair at will. As you have only seen it confined, you have no idea of its abundance, of what a mass of waving beauty it is – you see how it sweeps the floor; and while she was enduring this teasing torture, she was intently reading – a volume of the ‘Promessi Sposi’[The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni] in the original. And here,” she added, taking still another drawing from the portfolio, “here is another, a pendant for the last, if I am ever called on to illustrate the daily occupations – the arts and domestic arts – of a New England young lady. Here is Alice again with her wealth of tresses neatly tucked up under a morning-cap, her sleeves rolled quite above her dimpled elbows, her white apron tied over her breakfast gingham, bending over a marble ‘pasteboard,’ where she works many domestic spells, such as Eve did in paradise, involving the fruits of her garden in flaky paste, ‘tempering dulcet creams,’ etc., etc. How often I wish my Uncle Walter were here; such a blending of le beau et l’utile as there is in Alice’s life would enchant him, it enchants all men, I think.” Grace raised her eyes from the drawing to Archibald’s face; his eye met hers and he blushed (Lisle’s youthful infirmity of blushing had of late returned upon him); he blushed as if on the verge of betraying a secret; he started too, as if awakened from a dream, and Grace, giving to the blush, and the start, and the very grave look, her own interpretation, said, “I see, as I foresaw – my subject imparts a value to my sketches; if you like them pray keep them, they may prove pleasant souvenirs hereafter.” He thanked her, rather coolly, as she thought, and then suddenly recollected that Alice had sent him to ask her to go with him on an errand to Goddard’s. While she went for her hat, Lisle stood musing over the sketches, and handling them with the true feeling of a lover, as if Grace’s touch had consecrated them. “What an exquisite perception she has,” he thought, “what talent to express so much of Alice’s attractive graces in these slight sketches! Yes, yes, Alice is made and trained for the best married life, and he who wins her should esteem himself most happy.” But Lisle did not seem as if he were gazing upon a paradise in perspective, and he was half way to Goddard’s before the sun had risen above the clouds around his horizon. But he did cast his care behind him, and yielded for the hour without further resistance to the magic of Grace Herbert’s charms; and again in his world she, for the time, shone and ruled alone.

Grace, utterly unconscious of the feeling she inspired, blinded partly by her past reserved intercourse with Lisle, and partly by her conviction that Alice was his destiny, gave free rein to her natural frankness and earnestness; and thus with every hour put a new rivet in poor Lisle’s chains. Lisle would pause in the midst of a delightful conversation with her, with a feeling akin to that which one who has long, in silence and awe, knelt and worshiped before his divinity, might have, if that idol were suddenly to awake to human sympathy and bestow a sweet, familiar, condescending smile upon him. Certainly, a striking change was wrought in Grace; she had arrived at one of those rare and short intervals in any life, blessed with unclouded serenity. If a storm were gathering, she had no forebodings. Hers was the thoughtful happiness consequent upon having finished a painful experience, escaped a great peril, and opened with a holy purpose a new chapter of life. Though her intents and aspirations were higher and more distinct than ever before, she had a touching softness and gentleness of manner not natural to her; it indicated the genuine humility that springs from past failure. Humility is the angel of that furnace in which the gold becomes fine gold.

For the first time in her life she had worked, and she now felt the sweetness of rest purchased by labor; the air of the hill country was inspiring; the common events of every day, the little accidents of household life, had a surprise and a new charm for her, like light through tinted glass; and the simplicity and freedom of social intercourse at Mapleton were a revelation to her, contrasting as they did with the only country life she had ever tasted (a loathsome dose, she called it) when she went with Mrs Herbert and Anne Carlton to spend the hot months at watering-places. She was now beyond the fretting discords of their society, and en rapport with the people around her. We beg the loan of this mystical phrase, to express the instinctive sympathy between characters, however variously modified, which have the same basis.

With all the ardor of her impulsive feelings, that were too apt to rise above the high water mark of reason and rationality, Grace had (so she believed) renounced love forever. She had come to the station where she must make the decision, “married or single?” and recoiling from the first, as a burnt child dreads the fire, she would entrench herself in the safety of the last. “I can not live without affection,” she thought; “but is not that a harvest sure to the sower’s hand? and have I not Eleanor, and Frank, and their children, and dear Alice, with her ardent, self-forgetting, too partial love? and by-and-by, when Archibald Lisle is her husband, I shall get the better of his prepossessions, and, alas! his just judgment against me, and conquer his brotherly affection.” But it was not merely in a selfish point of view that Grace Herbert contemplated her future. She knew that God had instituted relations, and human dependencies, had so bound man to man, had made the happiness of one so dependent on the happiness of another, that no one could sunder the tie and live, in the highest sense of that significant word; and having withdrawn her maiden meditations from their natural subject, she was surveying, with characteristic ardor, the vast fields of dignified occupation and blessed benevolence patent to a single woman. We rather think that this sincere mapping of the future was suspended by the insidious pleasure of the long morning walk with Lisle.

Before they returned from their mission to Goddard’s, Alice and her mother, having disposed of their domestic concerns, met in the sitting room, where Daisy, on a low chair, in the midst of rejected playthings, was fretting as usual. “Alice,” she said, pettishly, “Pixie is getting to be such a naughty dog – he does not mind me a scrap; I have told him, ever so many times, to bring me my doll, and he won’t.”

“Here it is, my darling; don’t scold Pixie. Poor Pix, he is a little lame, and very dull, since we came home.”

“Pixie lame! How happened that, Alice?” asked her mother.

“Oh! did I not tell you that I saw le pèrre (looking significantly at the child) in New York. It was just as I was going into that horrid prison, where poor Max was, that a man passed, muffled in his cloak up to his eyes: Pixie ran after him, and I suppose snapped at his heels, for the man turned and gave him a brutal blow with his cane; and that, together with something the good matron, Mrs Barton, told me, made me think it must be he.”

“I hope not,” rejoined Mrs Clifford; “but I should not wonder if he were waiting, and watching there for the opportunity of a violent revenge.”

“Mother! do you think so?” exclaimed Alice, in a tone very different from the cool one in which her mother had suggested an everyday probability.

“Why, Alice,” said the child, over whom Alice was bending, “have you got your toothache again?” Her mother’s words had shot a sharper pang through Alice’s heart than the touch of the nerve of a tooth inflicts.

Her mother did not see her suffused face, and she proceeded, without suspicion. “Why, my dear child,” she asked, “did you say anything to Max about that person? You know we agreed on perfect silence as the only security, and Max is so reckless.”

Alice explained that her brother’s mention of Maltby was in another connection than theirs with him, and reminded her mother that she had never relieved their neighbors’ curiosity, in relation to the mystery of the child. “I think,” she said, “it has died out, of inanition.”

“You have been a miracle of prudence, my dear child.” Mrs Clifford was yet to learn that this, like many other assumed miracles, was explicable by natural causes.

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Daisy, “I wish they would not come back.”

“‘They’ – who do you mean, Daisy?”

“Why, they,” she replied, pointing to Grace and Archibald, who had just emerged from the wood; “you don’t play with me all the time when they are here.”

“No, Daisy, you have a rival now,” said Mrs Clifford; “and to tell the truth, I wish her away as much as you do.”

“Mother – dear mother!” exclaimed Alice.

“I can’t help it, my dear child; I beg your pardon, but I do. What does this mean?” she added, looking out at the door, “little Benny is with them. How did they find their way to Goddard’s?”

“I directed Archy. I knew you wanted to send up the croup syrup you made against Benny’s next attack; I was sure they would have a lovely walk this delicious morning along the lake, and it would not much matter if they did lose their way.” Mrs Clifford looked, she did not say it, “Oh, my child, you are losing your way!” After a moment’s silence, “See, mother,” exclaimed Alice, “Archy has made little Ben a bow and arrow – how kind! Aren’t they altogether a lovely picture? if you would only see Grace with my eyes.”

Grace had sat down in a rustic chair under a sugar maple, whose massive foliage excluded every ray of the August sun. Her cheek crimsoned by exercise, and her expressive face, lit up by happiness, justified Alice’s exclamation. Archibald was half recumbent on the turf at her feet. The rustic boy was kneeling before them, aiming his arrow at a bird on the wing. “Ah,” murmured Mrs Clifford, “if Archy were only as safe as the bird!”

“Archy is not aimed at, mother.”

“I am not so sure of that, Alice. I heard you repeating to Miss Herbert Archy’s extravagant admiration of her voice, and his telling you that he once heard her quote and ‘set to music’ by her delicious voice Bryant’s ‘Waterfowl.’ If I do not mistake it is your Bryant she is now reading to him – she is a practised woman.” Mrs Clifford shook her head distrustfully.

“Mother, you do misunderstand her. She is not reading from vanity, or to charm Archy, except by the poetry; she maintains that Bryant is our ‘truest poet and our best;’ to this Archy assents, but he is not quite prepared to agree with her that there is not a poet in the English language who mirrors nature with more absolute truth and beauty. Like our deep still mountain lakes, he gives back the sky, the trees, the least little floweret on their brim, without changing the tint of a leaf, or deepening a shadow; not presuming to improve by artistic elaboration the divine work. This Grace said, mother, and she took the poems with her today to test them in their own atmosphere, as you would a portrait by its original.”

“Vanity is ‘the most subtle beast of the field,’ my child; a complex artificial character like Miss Herbert’s is quite out of your ken, Alice.”

“No, mother; it is you that have dimmed your mental eyesight by straining it to look too far. Grace has infinite variety, but that does not involve dissimulation or affectation of any sort. She has not our air-line, unadorned ways, but she is as true as we are. She is all sweetness, nobleness; she is – she is glorious.”

Mrs Clifford listened coldly, and Alice felt as if she were plunged into a snow bank, when her mother interrupted her with, “Don’t rant in such a schoolgirl fashion, Alice; you are quite carried away with the condescensions of this town-bred belle.”

“‘Belle!’ what a name to apply to Grace Herbert. ‘Condescensions!’ that’s hardly kind or just, mother. Has she not always treated me as if I were every way her equal? Poor little me! – have I not always loved her?”

“Yes, as girls love and worship the idols of their imaginations. You were but a chit when you were together at Canda’s, and you then adored her as girls do a young lady senior, especially if she have the advantage of beauty and fashion. Your correspondence since has had the interest of intimacy without the disenchantment of personal intercourse. I have no faith in amies inconnues.”

“‘Inconnues!’ mother; have we not maintained a constant correspondence? Grace’s letters are a history of her life, and a perfect revelation of her character.”

“Like some other revelations – made only to the believing.”

“You know why I have not shown them to you, dear mother; there was always something confidential in them.”

“I know – about that fellow Copley. Why don’t they wind up their affairs? Such shilly-shally does not argue any great superiority on Miss Herbert’s part.”

“If I could only tell you all about that affair, mother – but I must not. Thus much I may venture to say, I am sure it will never come to anything.”

“I am very sorry for it.”

“Mother,” said Alice, playfully, laying her hand on her mother’s shoulders and looking steadfastly in her face, “has not some conjuror changed my generous, candid mother for a purblind old lady? Now you know Copley is not worthy of Grace, and you know it from your oracle, Archy who, long ago, gave you such a mean opinion of him.”

“And I still hold that opinion; but ‘he belongs,’ as we say, ‘to Miss Herbert’s congregation.’ In the trashy society she lives in, I doubt if she could do much better.”

“You forget that your paragon makes one of that society.”

“That is accidental. His relations with it began with the accident of a professional service for the Herberts.”

“And has been a long time maintained, dear mother, by a ‘casual concurrence of calamitous circumstances.’” She smiled archly; her mother in no wise returned the smile. “The crowning ‘accident’ of their acquaintance,” continued Alice, “is their meeting here – ‘there is a tide in the affairs of men,’ you know, dear mother, and of women too.”

“Poor child!” thought Mrs Clifford, “can she be in earnest in persisting in this idea?”

Alice was in earnest. Many a warm, true-hearted young girl’s love for another girl approximates, as did Alice’s, to worship. To her ardent fancies there was one other mortal not to be graduated by an ordinary scale, and that other being a captivating young man, and now brought with Grace to the romantic accessories of Mapleton, at the moment that she was providentially unshackled, the hour had come when they were to go straight forward to that goal, to which heaven as well as she, poor little Fate, Alice, had predestined them.

The pause in the mother’s and daughter’s colloquy was broken by Daisy calling out to Alice, “Do please carry me out where that little boy is. I don’t want to sit here forever.” Alice lifted the helpless creature in her arms, and caressed her tenderly. “You forgot me,” she said, “did not you, Alice?” Alice reassured her, and removed her and her playthings to join the group under the maple tree. Her mother looking after her said mentally, “Yes, poor foolish child, she forgets even herself. At this critical moment, from a mere girlish fondness, she is playing into the hands of that potent woman of the world, who, indeed, could win the game without my poor little girl’s help. Oh, Alice! Alice! you are throwing away the richest chance of your life; and I have wasted so many hopes and purposes, and little plottings – heaven forgive me!”

So much has been said and written against “manoeuvring mothers,” that it requires some boldness to betray the fact that Mrs Clifford had hoped to promote the union of her daughter with Lisle, by bringing them together at Mapleton. A mother may plod and plot day and night to secure for her daughter an advantage of education; she may compass sea and land to promote her health, and toil and save to augment her fortune; but when it comes to the great event on which her character and true prosperity, the welfare of soul, body, and estate, mainly depend, the mother – the heaven-appointed guardian – must not lift a finger, but must stand back, and wait on time and chance.

Mrs Clifford had loved Archibald from his boyhood, and after the death of her son Arthur, this affection became as strong and sensitive as if a maternal instinct, and as sacred as a religious duty. She had watched with infinite satisfaction over Lisle’s career. She had gathered from his letters – the almost preternatural sagacity of a woman in such affairs being rendered more acute by her personal interest – that Miss Herbert’s intimacy with Copley had, in breaking Lisle’s confidence in her, dispelled her charm for him; and now that at the moment a fair field was opened for Alice, when it seemed so natural, inevitable, that her favorite, prepossessed in her favor, finding all he had loved in the child ripened in the woman, her domestic education answering to his wants, her qualities and tastes so in accordance with his own; that her sweet and loveable child should be overshadowed, her mild effulgence dimmed in a more dazzling light, was more than Mrs Clifford could bear, human as she was, without some injustice to her who was thus thwarting her.

We feel bound, as we have been compelled to expose Mrs Clifford’s prejudices, to say that they were not wholly personal to Miss Herbert. She regarded her as coming from an “infected district.” She looked upon the fashionable society of New York much as it has been portrayed by certain popular writers, and if she did not believe that every fashionable woman is a “Mrs Potiphar,” she did hold them all to be vain, vapid, wearisome, and superfluous, and honestly believed that the world would be all the better if they were swept out of it. And therefore, independent of her secret deprecation of Miss Herbert’s visit at this juncture, she dreaded the contagion of the fine-lady tastes and habits that would in no wise harmonize with Alice’s life.

Mrs Clifford, too, was shy of new friends. She loved her old ones, often for no better reason than that they were “old ones.” She loved the country, as a child loves its mother. She loved old books; like dear “Cousin Bridget,” she “browsed” on old English literature. Johnson and his club, Pope and his cotemporaries were to her like familiar friends. Her romantic reading did not date later than the blessed era of the “great unknown;” it was a joke among her gossips that the only time she ever fainted was, when she discovered a novel of Madam George Sand in Alice’s hands. She rather thought it lost time to read any later poet than Pope, except Bryant. A copy of his poems, that had belonged to her son Arthur, was kept with her Bible on the table of her private sitting room.

Her social prejudices were nurtured by the charming society of Mapleton, small, but eclectic, consisting, as in most of our New England villages, chiefly of women; some few living in happy conjugal life; some honoring the past by a modest and dignified widowhood; and some maidens, “not young,” who, as was pithily said of them by a married cotemporary, “having as much happiness and more usefulness than usually belongs to married life, were occupied in the certain good of relieving the poor mortals already here, instead of the uncertain benefit of bringing others into the world, who might not find it well to be in it.”

But this vicarious maternity was not their sole occupation. There was a healthy vigorous intellectual life among them, free from literary ambition, but not without adornment. Accident having thrown some political exiles of the highest order, upon their kindness, the young women “followed the arts,” and while acquiring music, German and Italian, they naturally imbibed the generous political creeds of which their teachers were the apostles and martyrs.

Mrs Clifford, in regard to Alice, gave in to these “foreign trimmings,” as she called them, not that she valued the garniture, but that she thus gave “material aid” in the most delicate mode in which it could be imparted. So it became common law in Mapleton that the credential of a foreign teacher there must be a diploma from an Austrian fortress prison.

Chapter 37

“It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.”

Those are said to be the happiest days of our lives of which there is least to record. Least, perhaps, to be published, but not least to be cherished in grateful remembrance. Who counts the drops that compose the shower which sustains the vitality of nature? And who sets down the bright “good mornings,” and the peaceful “good nights” of family life? – the morning prayer, and the evening blessing, the interchange of innumerable good words, and offices of affection? – the look-outs into the beautiful and ever changing face of nature? – the three times gathering round the table, where mind and heart, as well as body, find their food? – the meetings and the partings enriched by love? – the books that vitalize and cheer the lives of high and humble? – the responsive smiles, the recreative laughs, the shouts, caresses, and fresh sayings (original poetry) of children? – the arrival of friends, and the coming in of the daily mail? Where are the blanks but in the thankless heart?

There were no startling events during the three happy weeks that followed Archibald’s arrival at Mapleton. The earth is still, and may seem dead, when beneath its surface are elaborating processes that are to deck it with blossoms, and hang fruit on its trees. These three short uneventful weeks, if measured by the æsthetic mode of sensations, were the longest in the lives of our friends. The busily idle days were never tedious. They wiled the hours away over their favorite authors, equally content whether they agreed or differed. Village hospitalities were exchanged without the gène of ceremony, or the folly of pretension. The early dewy mornings found Lisle and Alice mounted for a ride. Alice was a famous horsewoman – Grace remarked to her now thrice happy mother, that none of her accomplishments were lost on Lisle. The evenings were passed in moon-lit strolls, or gatherings on piazzas, where some talked, and others listened to music. Every house had its piano, and Grace frankly confessed, that her vanity had been rebuked by finding in a rural district those quite as accomplished as herself, in the “art and mystery” of music.

Tête-à-tête rides and drives in countries of an older civilization than ours might be excepted to, but it seemed not even to occur to the most fastidious spinster in Mapleton, that there was the slightest impropriety in their young friends charming away the hours among the hills. So they went, Archibald and Alice, or Archibald and Grace, or all together, unscathed by gossip’s tongue,

“To the beautiful streamlet by the village side,

That windeth away from the haunts of men,

To quiet valley and shaded glen;”

or they winded up through the forest path to that

“Narrow battlement”

whence

“Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,

Huge pillars that in middle heaven upbear

Their weather-beaten capitals.”

It must be confessed there was an atmosphere about these scenes very favorable to the growth of that little flower called “Love-in-idleness.”

Lisle’s position with these two young women, each supremely charming in her own way, would seem a very dubious one, but it was quite plain that no vulgar observer could liken him to the vacillating animal between the two bundles of hay. It was apparent which he had elected for his “daily food.” If there were moments when the old habits of his heart mastered him, and when as the blood rushed to his cheek, and an inevitable smile played on his lips at some beaming charm of Grace, he found himself involuntarily at her side, oblivious of Alice’s presence, all his devotions aforethought were to Alice, and Grace, for the first time in her life was left to enact the subordinate part of an observer.

Lisle’s predetermined, and therefore now duteous devotion to Alice, left Grace much to Mrs Clifford’s companionship. The mother’s prejudices were fused and transfused in her felicitous assurance of the fulfilment of her hopes. From doubting the justice of her prejudices she soon came to wonder she had ever entertained them. The moment the obstruction was removed, the natural sympathy between the young lady and her elder was manifest. They both belonged to the family of the “Great Hearts.”

One evening, just before the serving of tea, the letters and papers were brought from the mail. Lisle, with the keen appetite of all American mankind for works of this genus, had seized a newspaper, and was running his eye over it.

“Do you find any news, Archy?” asked Mrs Clifford.

“No, nothing of any consequence,” he replied, as people usually do, who first get possession of a fresh paper, unless it chance to contain something as startling as a revolution, or a murder among one’s acquaintance. “Oh, yes,” he added, “here are ‘readings for the ladies,’ a description of a ‘fancy ball’ at Newport; shall I read it?”

“Do read it, Archy,” replied Alice, eagerly.

“Alice has not got beyond ‘readings for very young ladies,’” said her mother; “but you may read it, Archy; Grace and I will endure it.”

Lisle exchanged smiles with Alice, and proceeded to read the details of the royal, sacerdotal, and heroic characters assumed by the beaus and belles of our cities congregated at the watering place of highest fashion. The initials only of the real names were given, and as Lisle read them, Grace, who was familiar with the names of most of the notorieties of the fashionable world, filled up the blanks. “Decidedly the most dazzling star in this brilliant galaxy” – we quote the paragraph, whose style might be termed adjective – “was the fair young lady who personated the superb Queen Elizabeth. The ugly old Queen would have bartered all the unmatchable jewels of her regalia for the youth, grace, and beauty of her counterfeit. The choice of this character, much criticized by certain coteries, was (we humbly surmise) determined by its relation to the noble Leicester. The beauty, brilliancy, gorgeousness, sublimity, and set of the earl’s costume, were never exceeded in any country. The diamonds were said to be of the first water, and the point lace, and ermine were beyond dispute real –”

“Oh, pray stop, Archy,” cried Mrs Clifford; “what fools our people are.”

“There is ever so much more, Alice – all the romance – but your mother won’t hear it. Oh permit me, Mrs Clifford – just this.” He read on: “‘As in our happy land there are no musty laws, or malicious lieges to impede royal connubial happiness, rumor reports that the hymeneal altar will soon be lighted to unite the fortunate Mr C–y to the beautiful Miss C–n.’ Who should they be, Miss Herbert?” honestly asked Lisle. A painful pervading blush overspread Grace’s cheek. Lisle saw it, and wished his question unasked. Grace saw that he observed it, and perhaps she divined the rapid process of his mind, for she answered, and without faltering, “Mr Copley and Miss Carlton.”

Alice, when Lisle hesitated, had risen to see for herself, and was looking over his shoulder, her eye riveted to the paper, when the “speechless messages” passed between him and Grace. Not at the trashy report of the ball was she looking; another column of the paper had caught her eye. The color faded from her cheek, and Lisle might have heard the beating of her heart. She rushed out of the open door, and sank down upon the seat under the maple tree. Neither her mother nor Grace observed anything unusual in her exit. She was habitually sudden and rapid in her movements. Lisle followed her. He seized her hand; his was tremulous, his voice choking, as he said, “Tell me, dear Alice – for heaven’s sake tell me –”

“Oh not now,” she cried, interrupting him; “don’t ask me now. I will, perhaps, another time.” And snatching away her hand, she sprang from him, and entering the house by another door, went to her own room, locked herself in, and gave way to anxieties she could not repress, and dared not betray.

“What a cowardly wretch I am!” exclaimed Lisle, as he walked off to the lakeside. “Shall I ever again have courage to ask if that cursed engagement is suspended, or if anything has happened to it? No – nothing can. What weakness to let this silly gossip open the door for a moment to thoughts, to hopes, that I had shut out forever.”

Some one says that every human being is alone, however intimate may seem the fellowship in which he lives with those around him. Certain it is, that each of the persons but just now gathered around the bay window, had within their own minds a solitary cell. It was an hour that invites to confidence. When the outer world grows dark, one is more inclined to throw open the windows and doors of the inner. Grace drew a brioche to Mrs Clifford’s feet, sat down, laid her head on Mrs Clifford’s lap, and sighed. Was the sigh drawn forth by the too vivid recollection of the past suggested by the fancy ball? or was there “a little cloud no bigger than my hand” rising in her spirit’s clear heaven, at the thought of Alice’s “culminating felicity?” “My dear Grace,” began Mrs Clifford, and paused; but feeling sure of herself, sure that her curiosity was not sharpened by any dread of Grace’s interference with her child’s future, that it was only prompted by pure concern for this lovely young woman’s happiness, she was about to proceed, when Grace looked up, her eyes brimming with tears, a smile quivering on her lips, and said, “Well, what would you say to me? pray say it.”

“I will, my dear child, and you shall answer me or not, as you like. I will make no inferences – think no thoughts. I fear you have been pained by that newspaper trash?”

Grace did not find it quite so easy to reply as she had imagined it would be. If she answered according to her first impulse, “not in the least,” Mrs Clifford would naturally rejoin, “what then has disturbed you?” a question she dared not answer to herself. Time was when she would have playfully equivocated. She was less of a world’s woman than she had been, much less easily tempted from the narrow way into little convenient detours. As she hesitated, a way of escape opened, and she plunged into it. She raised her head and began, not without faltering, but with a firm purpose to go on. “When first I came to you, Mrs Clifford,” she said, “Alice begged me to explain to you my relations with Horace Copley; I could not. I did not know you well enough, and I saw plainly that you did not like me.”

“My dear Grace!” exclaimed Mrs Clifford, interrupting her, “that was not because – it was because –”

“Never mind why it was, or why it was not,” said Grace, smiling, but dreading more to hear the explanation than Mrs Clifford to make it; “my, why, was very simple. You know we shrink from exposing our follies to those who do not love us. You did not then even like me; but taking to myself the sweet comfort that you do now love me, I will tell you all about the great moral blunder of my life, and then you may judge for yourself how much I can care for that silly gossip.” Here both ladies were startled by sounds from Alice’s room. “Is that Alice’s voice?” asked Grace. “I thought she was out walking with Mr. Lisle?”

“I thought so too,” said her mother, and concerned at the sorrowful tone of Alice’s voice, she was going to her, but returned to her seat, saying, “Oh, I understand it. She is soothing Daisy – I can not see into her devotion to that child. She is, to be sure, a piteous little object, but this devotion is so engrossing. There is no personal interest, however strong, that she does not suspend at the call of that child.”

“Pity stronger than love, Mrs Clifford? that was never heard of.”

Mrs Clifford shook her head, smiled, and said, “Go on, Grace; we will not let them interrupt us again.”

(We use our privilege to make a parenthetical visit to Alice’s apartment.

“What ails you, my Alice?” said the fond child, as Alice threw herself on the bed, and hid her streaming eyes on the child’s bosom. “Nothing ails me, Daisy,” she replied, “nothing.”

“Nothing! what a story, Alice. Only foolish little children cry for nothing, not grownup ladies; and you know who said so when he shut me in the closet. Don’t cry, my own Alice.”

“I will not, darling,” said Alice, smiling, or trying to smile through her tears; “we’ll neither of us cry, till we must – poor Daisy.”)

At the conclusion of Grace’s relation to Mrs Clifford, which was made without any glosses, she said, “There it is, dear Mrs Clifford – the history of my lost years.”

“Lost! don’t call them so. You have reaped a precious harvest, and thrown the chaff away.”

“No, Mrs Clifford, not so; my convictions are too strong to yield to the soothing of your affection, wise and good as you are; and so good that you cannot understand the evil nurtured by such a life as mine has been, the subordination of every noble aim to frivolity, self-indulgence, and littlenesses of all sorts. You may allow something for the spell the man wrought upon me, which truly I cannot conjure up again by any effort of imagination, or even of memory. I was the victim of an illness that could only prevail in a vitiated atmosphere. I saw through my stepmother’s poor little artifices to blind me, that she was trying to circumvent me. I knew it was the ambition of Anne Carlton’s life to marry Horace Copley, and worst of all, he played her off against me, and made me a party to the wretched game. And I went on, from year to year, fancying and trying to find the qualities, the virtues that should justify me to my own self-respect. It was the common childish folly of self-blinding, self-cheating.”

“Thank God, you were saved, dear Grace.”

“I do thank God for it, Mrs Clifford. How long I repelled the teachings and aids of His providence. There was the admonition of my sister’s life, of her true marriage, and yet I looked down upon her Christian course as a very humble career, no model for me. True, there were few men in our set calculated to instruct my judgment or elevate my taste.”

“But you knew Archibald Lisle?” interposed Mrs Clifford, involuntarily recurring to her paragon.

“Yes, he was occasionally thrown in my way” – Grace’s voice sensibly faltered – “and I confess light and darkness are not more different than he and Copley. I did not heed the contrast; no, it was not till Mrs Tallis’ disclosure, when my own follies were mirrored in hers, as in a magnifying glass, that I recoiled. A fountain of life sprang from her sorrow, and in her darkened chamber we both ‘saw light.’”

Mrs Clifford had been tempted to interrupt Grace, to remonstrate against her self-condemnation, to give words of her own conviction of the nobleness of Grace’s nature, which impressed her far more than the weaknesses she so courageously unveiled, but she had too much respect for the offices of conscience to interfere with them, so she stifled the words that her heart sent to her lips, and said, “So, my dear child, you and poor Mrs Tallis dropped your ‘load,’ and pressed on to the delectable city.”

“This is our purpose. She has helpful company – I must go the long way alone.”

“Aone, Grace! You surely have not made a vow to that effect?”

“No, not a vow, but a resolution springing from conviction. After my age, you know, Mrs Clifford, the affections lose something of their flexibility, the requisitions are more severe, and the chances of marriage much more rare.”

“You are three-and-twenty, I believe?” said Mrs Clifford, with a dissenting smile.

“Yes, just three-and-twenty.”

“Well, upon consideration, I believe you are right. The chances are fewer, but, like the Sybil leaves, the richer for those that are lost.”

“But you admit there is small probability of such a marriage as now would alone content me, a marriage like that of which our Alice is on the threshold, where to the enchantments of love is added a trust in character so secure that there can be no after falling from that grace.”

“My dear child, the world would soon come to an end with this refining. Would you prohibit all inferior unions?”

“If I could? No, marriage is a general law, and divine, and therefore with all its abuses far more good than evil comes of it.”

“Yes, yes, Grace,” exclaimed Mrs Clifford, the sudden clouding of her face betraying the pang of grievous memories, “if one must go through life with the ever fresh sense of irreparable loss, there is left the blessed compensation of children, the holy relation of brother and sister, the vital charities of home. And after all,” she continued, her voice resuming its ordinary tone of cheerfulness, “after all, I believe matrimonial disturbances are for the most part among idle people. They rarely occur in the middle classes. To be sure, marriage is rather a coarse partnership there, but it is surprising how evenly they trudge on through life together. Why, Grace, our rustic people generally regard single life as not only helpless and joyless, but almost ridiculous.”

“Then, dear Mrs Clifford, is it not high time that better opinions should prevail? As slaves must be trained for freedom, so women must be educated for usefulness, independence, and contentment in single life. They must look forward to it, not quite as I do, perhaps, as the only alternative to the happiest married life – that is my idiot-syncrasy as you would term it – but as a mode of life in which one may serve God and humanity, and thus educate the soul, the great purpose of this short life. So considered, single life would not long be regarded as either ‘helpless, joyless, or ridiculous,’ and that dreaded stigma, ‘old maid,’ would soon cease to be a stigma, and in the lapse of ages possibly become obsolete.”

“Oh, as to that, Grace, I know as many of the real scarecrows, the ideal ‘old maids’ among pretentious, sickly, fussy, gossiping, crabbed wives as can be found among single women from Maine to Georgia. And I have known old maids who have sustained to the end the doctrine of ‘perseverance of (single) saints,’ inclining me to the opinion of one of my married friends, who says, that it is because matches are made in heaven that some of the loveliest women are exempted from the – curse, she called it. That is going a little further than you do, Grace?”

“Yes, I only ask that single life should be made a blessing.”

“And a choice, Grace?”

“Yes, a choice in many positions, the chances being against a satisfactory marriage.”

“Oh, my dear child, what is quite satisfactory in life? it’s all a compromise.”

“I hate compromises, Mrs Clifford.”

“Just what I heard Archy say, yesterday, and just so emphatically, not to say bitterly; and here he comes, and you may finish the discussion with him, while I go and look for Alice.” “She,” thought the joyful mother, “is sure of the happiest married life, and Grace – well – if single, her life will be a beautiful one, but it’s rather premature at three-and-twenty to set the seal upon it.”

“Finish the discussion with Archibald Lisle?” thought Grace.

She did not allude to it, or to anything that bore the remotest relation to it. It mattered not what trifle “light as air,” she and Lisle now talked of when they were tête-à-tête, there was a certain thrill and mellowness in the tones of their voices that, if our readers have ever felt or observed, they know how much more is expressed than meets the ear.

Grace sat looking out at one window, Lisle at the other. The twilight deepened into night. Nothing more startling was said than, “The dew is heavy this evening;” “There is a new moon;” or, “Is that planet Jupiter?” Yet they sat immoveable, dreading an approaching footstep. An opened paradise would not have tempted either to leave the other, and still, Archibald felt much like the poor wretch who knows the peril of lingering near the draught he has forsworn. Grace had the solace of believing that she periled no one’s happiness but her own.

But Archibald Lisle was not a man to be turned from a purpose he had deliberately and conscientiously formed, nor voluntarily to yield himself to the charm of one woman when he had indicated allegiance to another; and when Alice opened the door, and instinctively drew back, and then, to cover her involuntary movement, said, “How stupidly you are sitting here;” he replied, “Waiting for you, Alice. The evening is lovely; will you take a row on the lake?”

“The boat is not there, Archy. Mother lent it this afternoon – she is always lending it.”

“I know the large boat is out, but Max’s sulky is there. That carries two.”

“And we are to go, and leave Grace?”

“Miss Herbert just remarked the dew was heavy, and –”

“Oh, that won’t do, Archy. My life, in a way, is of some value too.” Then changing her play to earnest, “You will go, dear Grace,” she said. “I will bring your shawl.”

And with her fleet foot, she was running to Grace’s room, when she called out, “Come back, Alice. I shall not go out this evening. And,” she added, in a tone which Archibald thought superfluously frigid – to Alice’s ear it betrayed pique – “I beg you not to abridge Mr. Lisle’s pleasure. I have letters to write, and shall not see you again. So, good night to you both.”

Alice whispered emphatically,

“Oh, Grace!”

And as she impressed on her friend’s cheek a “good night” blessing, she thought “how tiresome of them to keep up this childish play of ‘hide and go seek.’”

Not only fate and reason had seemed to Lisle to govern his decision in his first evening’s meditation at Mapleton, but he felt impelled to it by providential suggestions. It was plain to him, and so would have seemed to any observer, that Alice’s affection might soon be ripened into love. She was certainly more than he deserved, and he persuaded himself that, in addition to all others, “most excellent reasons,” loyalty to his departed friend demanded that he should throw himself at the feet of that friend’s sister, and not sulkily turn his back upon so rich a destiny.

But, alas! what weak auxiliaries are reason and reflection against the absolutism of a long indulged love. From his first meeting with Grace Herbert, to the present moment, she had been to him like the sun of a polar summer; and at Mapleton, unclouded by the obstructions of her town life, her light had continually shone, giving an enchanting lustre to his world. Still, “she is not what she seems,” he incessantly repeated to himself, “and if she were, she is lost to me. Once pledged to Alice, duty will strengthen me, and I shall break these bonds that I now struggle in vain with.” So for the last three days he had sought an opportunity of asking what he felt quite too sure of getting. Opportunities came, and were permitted to pass. Now, out on the lake he looked up to the polar star, and mentally symbolizing, thought there could not be a truer guide than the dear little girl beside him. She sat, too, pensively looking at the stars, making of them, also, perhaps, types of her heart’s mysteries.

“Alice,” Lisle said, in a low voice.

Alice started, recalled from a world of her own fond dreaming, and as he hesitated,

“Well, Archy, what is it?” she asked.

“Is that star just setting, Mars?”

“Mars! Why, Archy, what are you thinking about?”

That was just what he, for the last half hour, had been trying to tell.

“No, indeed,” continued Alice, “that is the evening star, Venus. I have been watching her, and wondering if in all the latitudes of our continent she is now the evening star. Can you tell me?”

“No, I am sure I can not; but why do you wish to know?”

“Oh if I could tell you, Archy!” she exclaimed, her manner becoming intensely earnest. “I wish I could,” she added, and her tears flowing; “but I cannot now – I can not.” Archibald was sorely perplexed; occupied with his own anxieties (forgive an egotism rare to him), he fancied she must have some, he knew not what reference to him, and he was relieved when she added, “Do let us go home, Archy. We have both been very stupid, and now we are something worse; but don’t speak to me again, Archy – I had rather you would not.”

Lisle did not, and he rowed to the shore, feeling (it is a simile somewhat musty) like a shrinking, cowardly wretch, who hears at the dentist’s door, “He’s not at home.”

Chapter 38

“There’s mischief brewing.”

We return to poor Amy. The humblest have their own world of day and night, sunshine and storm. Amy had gone on quietly with her duties since her encounter with her father at the mill. Conscious that her anxieties implied distrust of her father, she buried them in her own bosom. When Goddard, knowing the rectitude of his child, had endeavored to exact a promise from her to give up Seymour forever, she, with the caution which our Puritan people seldom lose sight of, replied, “I promise to give him up, sir, for as long as father lives – or as long as he feels to wish me to give up Martin.”

“That will do,” replied her father, with fearful emphasis.

“Providence may open up a way for us,” thought Amy, “and if He don’t, we must submit.” Neither sage nor Christian could teach better philosophy than Amy’s.

Seymour bore his trials as he could – he was no philosopher. He no longer met Amy at the accustomed places. She came not to the “Sabbath evening singing school,” the village lovers’ common meeting ground; “not even,” as Martin despairingly remarked, “when they were preparing the anthem for the cattle show.” “When, before this,” he said, “was there ever a donation party at the Reverend Mr Smith’s, and Amy not there?” He “guessed the minister missed the comforter she knit for him, and the little boys their stockings.” “Well, maybe she’ll go on the Cochin China mission, after all. Folks think Mr Blight has intentions – or maybe she’ll marry Rufus Bradley; he’s lost his third, and the street thinks he’s looking out again for permanent help – looking towards Amy!” This seemed too intolerable an hypothesis for Martin; after a sigh or two, he turned short about. “No,” he said, “she won’t take up with three women’s leavings, I know. It’s all Uncle Nat. He always was a despot, and now he’s kind o’ deranged, and what can Amy do?”

What poor Amy could do, she did. She tapped at Mrs. Clifford’s door in the early morning, and appeared at her bedside pale, and woebegone.

“What now, Amy?” said her mistress, starting from heavy sleep, “has anything happened at the mill?”

“Oh, ma’am,” she replied, “one of the children brought me a note from mother last evening, saying he had left in the morning more so than usual, and had not come home – it was long past suppertime; I surmised, and went straight to the mill. There he was! I have had the dreadfullest night holding him back; I prayed, and begged, and tried to reason with him; but what’s the use when folks have no reason to speak to? But I gained something; I staved off harm till daylight, and when people began to stir, he went home, and I come to you for advice, feeling I ought not to leave with our house full of company.”

“Never mind my company, Amy – Alice and I can do your work.” It is one of the felicities, as well as humanities of household life in New England, that ladies can perform domestic service when an exigency occurs; nor need the family wait for breakfast, or eat a bad one, because a cook or waiter falls out of line. “You must go back to your father, Amy,” continued Mrs. Clifford, “and stay by him for the present – your mother has no power over him?”

“No, ma’am, none – not half so much as Benny.”

“Then go, Amy; you will be both firm and gentle with him. Humor him, and tell him – for though Seymour wished that neither you nor your father should know it, yet in this exigency it may do him good – it certainly will you, poor child – tell him, then, that it was Seymour, not I, that was surety for him.”

“Was it Martin!” exclaimed Amy, starting from her dejected posture, leaning on her elbow, her eyes downcast and dropping heavy tears; as she turned, her face shone as if sunshine passed over it. “Was it indeed Martin?” she repeated. “Oh, it seems as if that must melt father.”

“I believe it will. So go straightway to him, good child, and do not fear or falter.”

Goddard’s dwelling was a mile from the village. Amy took the shortest way to it, a “cross-lots” path through a birch and maple wood, where there was a full choir of the few birds whose notes last into August. The air was filled with happy insect life. The still leaves were dripping from a shower that had just passed. The breezy clouds were flitting over the sky, alternating with the brilliant gleams of sunshine that penetrated to the stems of the trees with their dark shadows. Amy, not much given to observe or interpret nature, noticed this pretty play of light and shade. “It’s the passing clouds make the sunshine seem so bright,” she thought; “and the silence, darkness, and despair of last night make these pleasant sounds so musical, and I guess it’s father’s awful state makes Martin’s nobleness shine clear down to the bottom of my heart. What a difference! Father cares for nothing but gain – gain – gain; and Martin’s altogether above it.

Insensibly she caught the cheerful spirit of the morning, and she began building a small castle in the air hovering near the mill stream, and was just settling it on a firm foundation when, coming in sight of her father’s homestead, it toppled down.

Goddard was sitting on his own doorstep, his eye fixed on the ground, the image of sullen melancholy. Benny, his pet boy, was lying on the grass at his feet, playing with a garter snake.

“Oh, Amy,” cried the child, as Amy drew the gate latch, “come and see this cunning little snake – I can’t make father look at it.”

Goddard, startled by Amy’s approach, rose, and feeling the reptile at his foot, crushed the life out of it, muttering, “I hate them – snakes in the grass.”

“Oh, father!” cried the child, “how could you?”

“I am sorry,” said the father, patting the boy’s head, the muscles around his mouth slightly relenting, “I was not thinking when I did it.”

“But you should think, sir, before you do things, and then you would not have to be sorry afterwards.”

“Benny is right, father,” said Amy, looking steadfastly into her father’s eye.

“Amy,” said Goddard.

“What was father going to say?” asked Amy.

Goddard’s voice had softened – it resumed its monotone. “No matter, no matter, we both know what we’re thinking of; there’s no use wasting breath talking.”

“Father does not know what I have to tell him – ’twill make him feel different.”

“No, Amy, nothing will – you’ve tried, mother has tried, and,” he added, his voice faltering, “Benny has tried.”

“Tried what, father?” asked the petted child, who had slipped into his lap, and put his arm around his neck, clinging to him when everyone else recoiled from his dreary aspect.

“You can’t do it, child,” he said, “you can’t all do it – it’s a cursed load that’s crushing me, and I and it must go down together.”

“Oh, father don’t know all,” cried Amy.

“What is it I don’t know?” he asked, turning fiercely upon the gentle girl; “are you keeping company with him again; are you married to him?”

“Oh, no, sir; did I not promise, father?”

“You did, and you never broke your word yet, child.” Goddard drew his hat over his brow, his lips quivered. It seemed a gracious softening, and Amy ventured, with some circumlocution, to communicate the fact of her lover’s generosity. Once only he raised his eyes to her, and a gleam of light shot from them, but he settled back into his habitual gloom.

“Why father,” said the boy, clearing his way to the only idea he could gather from Amy’s communication, “I think Cousin Martin is very good – don’t father think he’s good, sir?”

“No, no, no – did not I tell you I hated snakes in the grass? A thousand dollars surety is he? – hum! I should have owned the mill but for his underhand work, and I should have made five hundred dollars out of it year by year. He has wronged me, he has!” and setting the child down, he walked off toward his potato field. There he continued till late in the afternoon, hoeing steadily, except when once he came to the bars, beckoned to his boy, took him in his arms, embraced him vehemently, and without speaking, left him.

Towards evening he was seen in a neighboring village shop buying a considerable quantity of gunpowder. An acquaintance seeing he had no fowling piece with him, asked what he was going to do with it? “What is that to you?” he gruffly replied, and walked out of the shop.

Chapter 39

— “Why is your cheek so pale?

How chance the roses there to fade so fast?”

A change had come over Alice from the hour she had inspected the newspaper over Lisle’s shoulder. This change was obvious to all her family, but by none referred to the right moment, or traced to the true cause. She had been so uniformly sparkling with vivacity since Grace’s coming, and she was habitually so frank and bright in her outer life, that in respect to the inner, one might have made the child’s inference, who said, on looking up at the starry firmament, “if the wrong side is so beautiful, what must the right side be?” But alas! now both inner and outer were often clouded. It became evidently necessary to her to have forethought and predetermination about the little, hourly, gracious hospitalities of home that had been spontaneous, and therefore charming. The roses were fading from her cheek; she was moody and pensive, and fell into reveries, and would sigh, or smile, or blush when startled from them. She would sometimes try to make an excuse for them; but poor Alice was no masker, and as these sighs, from seventeen to twenty, have an accepted interpretation, it was not strange that Mrs Clifford’s family – including “the strangers within her gates” should come to one conclusion. Max, in boy fashion, rallied her in season, and much out of season, his mother thought, when, in the sweet security of happiness long waited for, she smilingly interposed her shield; and Lisle, and he was no self-exaggerating coxcomb, determined to accept his manifest destiny, and not by further procrastination make himself more unworthy of a love next best to that which, to him, was unattainable. As many an ignorant seaman is wrecked by disregarding the magnet, and relying on his own “observation,” so are men by submitting their instincts to what they deem their sober judgment.

Lisle had periled the happiness of more than one, when he tore himself away from silent communion with Grace, and invited Alice to go to the lake with him, with a purpose – whose firmness he magnified – of putting the seal and superscription to his fate. He had been as much puzzled as relieved by Alice’s recoil. “It could not be caprice,” thus he reasoned, “it was mere girlishness. Well, my affairs will soon be settled, and these useless agitations over forever – come moderation! come tranquillity!” What a level dull prairie of a future was this to the possible paradise that had floated before his younger vision!

The old wholesome custom of an early dinner, an hour’s advance of the “meridian” of Queen Elizabeth’s time, obtained at Mapleton, and that family rite having been duly performed, and a thundergust having passed away, leaving the air fresh and fragrant, Lisle and Alice were awaiting Grace to take a long ramble to a certain “Prospect Hill” – (the Puritan proscription of fancy extends even to names) that overlooks a long sweep of the Hudson, and hills, valleys, and lakes, to where the Kaatskills

“Shut in the exploring eye.”

There was some delay on Grace’s part. Alice did not take the hindrance placidly; she put on her mantilla, threw it off, drew her gloves on and drew them off, and finally snatched a skein of silk from her workbasket to wind by way of sedative. Archibald extended his hands to hold it. Alice’s eyes met his – “What are you smiling at, Archy?” she asked in all simplicity.

“At you, dear Alice. I never shall understand womankind.”

“By ‘womankind,’ you mean Grace or me, or perhaps both. But I comprehend you, Archy, and I will tell you what you are like – like a man who has a book in his hand with a puzzling problem which he might solve by turning the leaf, and he stands playing with his thumb and finger, instead of turning it.”

This was not the first time that Lisle had recoiled from Alice’s frank, direct way of going to the point. It was repulsive to his sensitiveness and reserve; but “no shrinking now,” he thought, and he replied, with a courageous effort, “I would have turned the leaf last evening, Alice, when we were on the lake, but you would not let me.”

“Why, Archy, I don’t see what you mean, nor what last evening had to do with your problem. I was very wretched. I am sure you know me well enough to know I do not like concealments. You know I love, like the birds, to spread my wings in broad sunshine, you know I do, but –” she hesitated.

“This is rather plain speaking,” thought Lisle. He involuntarily looked searchingly at Alice to see if she could mean what her words implied to him, and a blush so evidently painful flushed her face, that he averted his eye, and both were sensibly relieved by the appearance of Amy, who was passing through the room.

“Do, Amy,” said Alice, “see what keeps Miss Herbert.” And as Amy, without a word, or the movement of her pale face, obeyed, Alice exclaimed, “Poor Amy! I can not stand seeing her so pale, and petrified; it is a wretched out-of-joint world; but there comes Grace at last; take care, Archy, you are letting the silk slip. There,” she added, tossing it, a hopeless snarl, into her workbox, “it’s like everything else, everything in life is snarled.”

“Why, what is the matter, my child? What has happened?” asked her mother, as she entered from the garden, following Grace.

“Oh, enough, Mrs Clifford,” replied Lisle. “Alice has just been spelling Amy’s face, and run her head afoul of the great question of evil.”

“And, like most people, under twenty, Miss Alice probably expects to solve it. Stop where you are, my child; do all you can to avoid evil, and lessen misery, and accept and endure what you can not cure; a philosophy I have just been practicing under my plum trees. Let those theorize about evil that have nothing else to do; it has been a good puzzle for idle brains ever since Adam’s time, and is like to last as long as there are men and women – and curculios.[Weevils] But, my dear friends, it is quite time for you to be off; you will be late at home.”

“We have been waiting for Grace, mother. It’s hard waiting even for you, Grace; truly, ‘those serve who wait.’”

“Those of your restless temper, Alice. While you have been impatient, Miss Herbert has been helping me to fill a basket with our late raspberries.”

While Grace went for her hat, Alice asked “why she was not summoned to the raspberry picking?”

Mrs Clifford well knew why; she was feeling, too, the weary task of waiting, and she would not interrupt any opportunity that seemed to indicate its end. She did not notice Alice’s question, but said, “The raspberries are for old Mrs Denham – just leave them, in your way, Alice, and take this lovely bouquet which Grace has tied up for me, to the sick girl at Smith’s.”

“Ah, mother, you find Grace is not quite the superfluous fine lady you took her for one little month ago.”

“No, indeed, Alice,” said Mrs Clifford, who had not only righted a wrong judgment but had enough candor (the rarest of the virtues) to confess it. “I knew that temperament and training were against Grace, and I did not believe that she was strong enough to master them. I have not the prevailing habit of deferring to my juniors, but in regard to Grace, your instincts, Alice, were truer than my judgment.”

“Dear, generous Mrs Clifford,” thought Lisle, “it is plain that you are as ignorant as the rest of the world of Miss Herbert’s engagement; if you were not, such praise would be keen irony to one who, instead of ‘mastering,’ has weakly yielded to the worst and weakest of temptations.”

Grace came from her room equipped for the walk. “Now, dear mother,” said Alice, “your last directions.”

“After you have dropped the bouquet, and the raspberries, you may leave the last Edinburgh at Crofts’. Poor fellow! he is on his crutches yet. Time was, Archy, when it would have gone hard to send off a fresh Edinburgh, but now –”

“Oh, mother,” interrupted Alice, “is there any other errand?”

“Nothing, but just to step round (“mother’s ‘step round,’” whispered Alice to Archy, “is a half mile’s circuit’),’ to Goddard’s, and see if all is going right there. Poor Amy is so troubled; and stay, don’t you want to take the ‘Heart of Mid Lothian’ to Mrs Goddard; she says ‘nothing appeases’ her like one of ‘Mister Scott’s novels.’ And when you are there, tell Goddard, or leave word for him, that he may have the calf.”

“Mother! Clover’s calf? – your Ayrshire?”

“Yes, he fancied it, and it may divert his mind.”

“No doubt anything he can convert into five dollars will divert Goddard’s mind. Is there anything else?” added Alice, springing from the doorstep, and looking back smilingly at her mother.

“Yes, one thing, Archy; be kind enough to drop in and tell the Clarkes we expect them to tea. Ask them to bring the children – they’ll amuse poor Daisy. And, oh, just one thing more; take up the little whip I bought for Benny.”

It was thus, by diffusing her thoughtful benefactions noiseless, and nurturing as the dews, that Mrs Clifford had become the general providence of Mapleton. There were no “poor” there in the technical sense, but wherever humanity is, there is its lot – wounds, into which the healing balsam of sympathy may be dropped, and diseases of mind and body that thoughtful wisdom may alleviate.

There had been sorrowful passages in Mrs Clifford’s life; griefs that have few parallels; but no egotistic murmur, or useless wail escaped her. They were indicated only by her quick susceptibility to the sorrows of others; if these did not admit relief she shut her eyes to them, and genially partook the happiness of the happy.

Chapter 40

— “And wherefore doth Lysander

Deny your love, so rich within his soul,

And tender me, forsooth, affection?”

Our friends were proceeding on their walk through the village street, embowered with sugar maples and far-stretching elms, and sweet with the thousand flowers that were exhaling heavenward in delicious incense the showers that had poured on them at midday when they were met, and all romantic associations were rudely broken by a distinguished person, who, with a full stop facing them, glanced his eye from Alice to her companions, plainly indicating a duty for her to do. Alice comprehended, and introduced him as “Major Hart.” The Major was, in no way, a man to be dodged; he was full six feet two inches in height, and with shoulders as broad as a porter’s, and strength of limb in proportion. His face was round as the full moon, and as jolly as that to the reveler’s eye; his hair was jet black, abundant, and curling, and his whiskers, and elaborately-tended moustache of the same character; in short, as our reader must perceive, if our delineation does him justice, he bore a pleasing resemblance to the blocks exhibited in barbers’ shops, the beau ideals of the gentry of the razor and brush.

After expressing his regret that he had been absent during Mr Lisle’s visit to Mapleton, and his fear that it had been very dull for him, he patronizingly added, “If you are not going too far, Miss Alice, I will accompany you.”

“Oh, Major Hart, we are going too far – I – I mean, we are going very far – down to Prophet Crofts’, and round by Goddard’s, through the glen, and up to Prospect hill.”

“Bless me! through the glen – why it’s like penetrating a chaparral. I don’t shrink from the walk; after my Mexican life, you know, it’s a mere skirmish; but I have an engagement with a client at seven, and it’s now four o’clock.”

The Major stood deliberating, with his ponderous watch in his hand, and chain and seals depending thereto that must have drawn heavily on a Californian remittance of gold. Unfortunately the good nature of our people does not allow them to profit by the short process of snubbing, so thoroughly understood in the fatherland; and Alice said, in a tone of subdued impatience, “It is not possible for us to get home by seven, Major Hart; not before eight or nine, perhaps ten.”

“Ah well, we professional gentlemen must make sacrifices to the fair sex, Mr Lisle,” replied the major, not doubting he was bestowing a boon in inflicting his tediousness. “You are of the profession, Mr Lisle?” Lisle bowed. “Yes, so I thought; I have seen your name in the law reports in the Daily Times – capital reports they are – and in the Boston Law Reporter, quite a compliment to a tyro in our profession, Mr Lisle.”

Lisle bowed again – not at all as if his head were turned by the “compliment;” and Alice whispered to Grace, “The fly in the ointment; how shall we get rid of him?”

Chance came to their aid. The daily coach passed, with a single passenger, a lady with a fearful amount of baggage, huge trunks, portmanteaus, and boxes. The coach was passing rapidly with the impetus it usually receives on approaching a country inn. The lady put out her head, bowed, and waved her hand.

“Was that bow to you or to me, Mr Lisle?” asked the Major.

“Indeed,” replied Lisle, hemming, stammering, and biting his lips, “I do not know for which of us the honor was intended.”

“Well, what do you say, ladies? Ladies, as we of the profession know, Mr Lisle, are the best witnesses.” The ladies’ veils were down. They had not observed the stranger, nor seen the salutation. “Such a polite and pleasant bow as that,” resumed the Major, “should not pass like a ‘wild goose’s feather, unclaimed of any man,’” and chuckling at what he considered his brilliantly apt quotation, he added, “I conclude, on reflection, that must be a lady I met at the President’s levee in Washington, two years ago. I wonder what she can have come to Mapleton for?” The Major’s further “reflection” had brought him to some other conclusions, and to a rather satisfactory solution of his wonder; and after walking a few paces further, he said he “was sorry to excuse himself – it was a pity the ladies should not have a beau a piece – but, on second thought, he felt it would be wrong to disappoint his client;” and so he took his leave.

“Then you have bores, dear Alice,” said Grace, “even in these purlieus of Paradise?”

“Yes, Grace, indigenous bores. But who can this blessed lady be who wrought our deliverance?”

Archibald went manfully up to the stake, and replied, “A very particular friend of mine, Alice, and an acquaintance of yours, Miss Herbert – Miss Adeline Clapp.”

“Your hobgoblin, Archy, as you called her in a letter to my mother.”

“Poor Mr Lisle,” said Grace; “there’s nothing for you but to drown yourself in Lily pond!”

“Oh! she would bring me to life again; ‘water won’t drown, fire won’t burn;’ no elemental power can save me from her omnipresent clutch – there’s no way of escape. Don’t speak of her again – don’t allude to her; the thought of her tears my nerves.” There was a real tragedy on Lisle’s countenance, which seemed very comical to his companions, but they forbore, except by the exchange of merry glances, any further allusion to the subject, and he forgot its annoyance. The present was to him one of those rare and downy passages in human life that are perfectly satisfactory. No thought wandered back to the past – no restless dread pointed to the future.

They were soon in the lovely woodland paths beyond the village, Alice having left them, here and there, to do her mother’s errands, saying, as she did so, “Go on, I will overtake you,” or, “I will join you at the top, or the bottom of the hill,” as the case might be. Poor Archibald – these short passages alone with Grace, the last perhaps he might enjoy unfettered, seemed to him, like some moments between waking and sleeping, to comprise a lifetime of thought and feeling.

“Now one more detour and I have done,” said Alice; “give me the book and the whip, Archy, and I will meet you at the footbridge, below the dam – you remember it?”

“Remember it! Did Alice ever tell you, Miss Herbert, how she tumbled off that bridge when she was a little thing – not quite so tall as she is now?”

“Yes, she told me, long ago – at school, you know, Alice – and how you fastened your arms round Mr Lisle’s neck, and came near to drowning him; and do you remember what else you told me about it?” added Grace, with a significant smile.

“Oh yes, indeed, some foolery about my being in love with Archy, as silly girls will be, ever so young. But now we have come to something more substantial, a grownup friendship – have not we, Archy?” and she playfully kissed her hand to him, as she ran off towards the Goddards.

“How subtle is self-love!” There was something grating to Lisle in Alice’s perfect self-possession. He had certainly nothing warmer than friendship to offer her; but he expected something more. Men, the least selfish men, expect more than they give.

“It’s very thoughtful of your Ma,” said Goddard’s wife. “Benny will enjoy the whip; but my plate’s upside down. I always told him he was too worldly-minded – toiling and toiling o’ days, and reckoning up o’ nights. Says I, ‘Goddard, it’s the blessing of the Lord,’ says I, ‘that maketh rich;’ but he did not think much of that kind of riches, and went on, and on, till it’s come to where it has – I ain’t superstitious, but it looks dark. He has not tasted victuals today; he has not come in from the potato field. He’ll hoe, say half an hour, and then stand stockstill as a scarecrow, leaning on his hoe. He even sent Benny away from him; poor Benny, he’s like a weaning child – fret, fret.”

“But, Mrs Goddard,” said Alice, cheerily, “you must not fret, fret, too. Put away your sewing, and try and divert your mind with this book my mother has sent you – the ‘Heart of Mid Lothian;’ perhaps you have not read it?”

“La! Miss Alice, I have read it twice over; but that’s nothing. I always say Mister Scott’s writings are like light – you can’t have too much of them. I am ready enough to put aside my sewing; I feel sewing is aggravating. Thank your Ma – she knows what will lift a body right out of the mire.” Alice understood her people well enough to receive this as a burst of enthusiasm from a Yankee woman, and she left Dame Goddard, blessing Sir Walter in her inmost heart for the charm that charms wisely, surely, and universally.

Alice rejoined her friends at the foot-bridge. They expressed no uneasiness at her delay. As they were passing over the bridge, Lisle paused midway to point out the precise spot in the narrow, but deep stream where Alice fell in. The sight of the place recalled forgotten incidents. He related them circumstantially, and turning to appeal to Alice, he saw that she was leaning on the railing, apparently not listening. She started, and turned suddenly. There were tears in her eyes. A shadow came over Archibald’s face, and his voice changed from its animated tone to one of tender sympathy. He took her hand affectionately; “dear Alice,” he said, “forgive me. I was not thinking of Arthur – you were.” Alice’s tears reminded him of the passionate tenderness with which Arthur, when they met him on their way home, had taken his little drenched and half-drowned sister into his arms.

Alice was the truest of human beings. Nothing like evasion, or subterfuge, or false show of any sort was tolerable to her. She could not take the credit to her sisterly feeling which Archibald had given to it, and with a tremulous voice and averted eye, she said, “I was not thinking of Arthur. Please,” she added, hurriedly, “don’t ask me what I was thinking of.” Lisle did not ask, he only guessed – to blush before the walk was over, for the unwonted conceit of that guess.

“You are a little taller than you were then, Alice,” said Grace, smiling, “but not a whit less a child.” And Grace sighed as she made the same inference that Archibald had; both were at fault. To what volumes of feeling may a smile or a sigh be a key! Alice was startled: “Have I,” she thought, “betrayed anything to Grace’s keen eye?” But as she met that eye, there was no “speculation” in it – Grace was reading the painful secrets of her own heart.

They proceeded, winding along the beaten path that followed the mill-stream, and passing through the romantic “glen,” a deep ravine sunken between hills (by courtesy, mountains), where their wild path winded around or surrounded huge rocks covered with mosses, lichens, and fern; and then ascending, through dense woodland, and along the rocky edge of a precipice overhanging harvest fields, they came out on “Prospect Hill,” the smooth summit of the landscape.

There they sat down, and forgot the time, as young people will forget it and throw off its trammels, who are bound together by a strong and developing interest. They were tired, and rest was sweet. They looked down on a scene characteristic of New England, and though familiar in our hill country, it has always a fresh and soothing charm, from its repose and affluence of rural prosperity and contentments. There were white villages, with their ever-attendant academies, and church spires pointing heavenward from hilltop and valley; orchards with their reddening fruit, and pasture fields with their herds; brooks gleaming, like silvery paths, along rich green meadows; lakes looking out, like sweet, blue eyes, from beneath the brows of overhanging hills, and the Hudson, which in the far distance looked like a ray of light playing around the base of the Kaatskills. There they lingered to see the sun set, and to see the moon rise. The scene was new to Grace, and the finest chords of her being responded to it, like an instrument to the touch of a master. The spirits of both Grace and Archibald were so raised above their ordinary level, that material things were glorified mediums to them; poetry alone seemed a fit response to the outward influence. Grace would recite a favorite passage from a favorite poet; Lisle responded with another – the smallest phrase she uttered had its “prosperity in his ear,” an undefinable charm. Poor little Alice was restless. She wandered off and plucked wild flowers, and returned to deck Grace’s hair with them; if she spoke, it was of some fact or circumstance that seemed to Lisle not in harmony with the present scene of enchantment. She withdrew and sat apart. Suddenly it occurred to Lisle that she had felt the embarrassment of being a third party, and he started to his feet with a compunctious pang. “Ah, you do hear the nine o’clock bell, Archy,” called out Alice, in a tone not the least querulous, but whose playfulness might indicate that he had appeared quite beyond sublunary sounds; “it is quite time we were on our way home,” she said; “but, before we go, please, Archy, run down into that hard hack field and get me a bunch of fringed gentians – they grow like weeds there – I promised dear little Daisy to bring her some.” These were words of small import, but they produced a sudden revolution in Lisle’s mind; they awoke him from a delicious dream, and broke like a knell a spell of enchantment. He went to do Alice’s bidding, and in that short walk he felt the unmanliness of suspended resolution, and deferred duty; and resolved, at the very first opportunity, to pledge his loyalty, and give into the hands of another the reins he felt too weak to hold. Alas! duty is a bungler at heart’s work!

The flowers were plucked, and they set out on their return. Varying their route, in order to shorten it, they entered a long strip of woodland, by a footpath, in which Alice, who was familiar with it, led the way. Grace halted at a quagmire, over which Alice had leaped dry shod. “Oh, Alice, I can’t do that feat,” said Grace, with a dismay, half tragic, half comic.

“No, do not attempt it,” cried Archibald, with the eager deference a man instinctively pays to graceful impotence in a beautiful woman. “Is there any way of getting round this?” he called to Alice, who was going on, quite unconscious she had achieved anything difficult to be done.

“Round! No, Archy, of course the path lies in the only place where it is easy to pass it; but you come over, Archy. Here, just by, is a pile of cut wood, and we can soon make a bridge for Grace to pass over this great gulf!” Before he was at her side, she had thrown down a bit of wood, saying, playfully,

“There be some sports are painful, but their labor

Delight in them sets off.”

Lisle took up the quotation, and throwing down billet after billet, said,

“Some kinds of business

Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters

Point to rich ends.”

“Thanks! – enough,” cried Grace. “Now, you, Ferdinand, come on this side, and take one of my hands, and you, Miranda, the other, and so I shall make this perilous passage, and ‘love’s labor’ shall not be lost.”

Perhaps Archibald was disconcerted by Grace placing them so distinctly, by her allusion to their quotation from Ferdinand, in the relation of lovers, or it might be the grasp of Grace’s hand; he blundered, his foot slipped. Grace instinctively pulled away her hand, the bit of wood on which she stood so turned, that one of her feet was submerged. Archibald, adroitly, and with confused apologies, lifted her to the dry ground, and both he and Alice stooped to wipe the mud from her boot; Alice exclaiming, “French boots! and an absurdly little foot, Grace, for a country scramble,” and Archibald admiring, as men will, without any reference to its capabilities, the small beautiful foot “bien chaussé.”

Grace was glad of time to recover from what she fancied was a slight sprain of her ankle, which she was eager to conceal, that it might not hinder their walk. She struggled on, sitting down as often as a fallen tree, or moss covered stone afforded her a pretext.

“This is very pleasant,” said Alice, “but we must go on; it’s nearly ten, and my mother will be anxious.” Grace was obliged to confess the cause of her lingering. Archibald at once proposed to go to the village for a conveyance. “The road could not be far from them, and while he was gone, Miss Herbert might manage, with Alice’s assistance, to reach it; or, still better, he would bring a man from the village to assist in bearing her to the carriage.” Alice opposed this. “It was at least two miles to the village by the road.” “She knew a much shorter cross-cut – Archy could not find it.” Archy proposed attending her. “Poor Archy,” said Alice, “it is a harder problem than the ferriage of the goose, the corn, and the fox. But come, we will compromise – compromises cut all the gordian knots now-a-days. You shall come with me, Archy, to the end of the wood, and then return to Grace, while I go to the village.” This was agreed on, Grace protesting herself particularly pleased with the novelty of her position.

Archibald and Alice traversed the wood in silence, and in a much shorter time than they expected, for they seemed not to have gone far beyond Grace’s hearing, when they reached the end of it, where the trees appeared as if they had filed off on each side to encircle a natural vestibule or entrance. They were startled by the beauty of the place, and paused for a moment, in a flood of moonlight, to look at the quivering shadows, and the stems of the white birches glistening in the light.

Alice was the first to move. When she reached the fence, where it was so broken that the topmost rail was but a step from the ground, she put her foot on it, and turning, said, “Now is your time, Archy,” with such simplicity, that it was strange he could misunderstand her.

But Lisle was befogged, and he did misunderstand her; and retaining the hand he had taken to aid her, he said, “Come back – stop one moment – let it be my time. I will ‘turn the leaf’ now, and you must solve ‘my problem’ for me. Alice, do you? – I mean, can you – that is, will you love me?”

“Why, Archy! – why, what do you mean? Why, certainly, you know I do, and can, and always have loved you.”

“Alice, you surely understand me. You know what I mean; what I am offering; what I am asking.”

“I – I – I am not sure I do,” she replied, half frightened, and half laughing. “You seem to be moonstruck, Archy.”

“I never,” he replied, with a deadly serious smile, “was more rational. It shall be the study of my life to make you happy, and better to deserve the boon I ask.”

“But, Archy, you are not in earnest?”

“Indeed, I am.”

“Why, Archy, it seems to me so absurd, so strange – a dream! It never occurred to me that you had a thought of me. Why, no, dear Archy, I am very fond of you, but I don’t love you in the least – in that way I mean – I never did, and I never can.” They both stood silent for a moment, surely a moment of sharper suffering to Lisle than was his desert. Alice’s arms hung down, and her hands were tightly clasped. Suddenly, with that inspiration of which the finer sense of woman is capable, she touched the truth. Archibald saw the blood flow back in flood tide to her blanched cheeks; her glance pierced his soul. “My dear Archy,” she said, “you have wronged me and wronged yourself – why, I can not tell, I can not guess. Men tell true love without speaking, never with such faltering, freezing speech as yours – hesitating – weighing your words – urged on by some delusion, and held back by your own upright soul! Oh, I am so sorry, Archy!” Turning away, she sprang like a fawn over the fence, and disappeared from his sight. She hurried on, feeling much like one who should see the sun rise from the west, or any other imaginable contravention of the laws of nature. She hastened forward through bush, through brake, across fields and fences, till she came to the footpath along the outlet of Lily Pond. By this time clouds had gathered and obscured the moon. Alice had no fears; her mind was preoccupied, and she was familiar with the way. She saw the light glimmering from the village, and the risks from an irresponsible foreign population were yet unknown in Mapleton. She was not therefore in the least startled by dimly descrying the figure of a man a few paces ahead of her. He paused for a moment. She thought he observed her, for after springing over a fence into an orchard that was parallel to her path, and a small distance from it, he crouched down; Alice stopped; he rose again, and proceeded so rapidly that she lost sight of him. His stealthy movement excited her curiosity. Suddenly it flashed upon her that the man must be Goddard going again to the mill to carry out his insane purpose. She forgot herself, forgot Grace, and thinking only of averting the wretchedness impending over poor Amy and her people, she hastened on. Her way now ran along a bank on a level with the mill dam and above the road. She saw the man scramble down the bank, cross the road, and enter the mill. When she reached the end of the bank, she paused, recoiling from encounterig a wretch wrought up to desperate deeds. While she hesitated, a candle was lighted within the mill, and through a window, opposite to her, she clearly saw Goddard walking up and down, and violently gesticulating.

“He is certainly about to do some horrible thing,” thought Alice; “burn the mill! – perhaps burn himself in it – poor Amy!” She then saw him take a parcel from his pocket, and pour its contents on the floor. “Merciful God help me!” she exclaimed, and brave in the faith of her instinctive prayer, she slid down the bank, crossed the road, and entered the mill by an outside stairway, that led up to the mill loft. Goddard stood in the middle of the floor with a candle in his hand, and a pile of gunpowder at his feet. Alice seized the candle and held it at arm’s length. Goddard recoiled, awed, and overpowered. It must have been a strange sight, this brawny man with his frenzied eye and coarse, distorted features, recoiling before a slight girl, who, for the moment, was a heavenly presence, a resistless force like that the painter has given to the light figure of the angel Michael in his triumph over the man of sin.

But it was but a minute’s pause, and Goddard rallied. “Who the devil sent you here?” he said.

“God sent me,” she answered; “God sent me to save you, Goddard!”

“No, no,” he said, recognizing her, “Amy sent you. Save me! – you can’t do it, nor Amy, nor all the powers above!”

“Oh, don’t talk that way, Goddard – think of your family!”

“Think of them! I have thought – I have done nothing but think – what’s the use? We should all be beggars together. Hark! there comes a wagon! Clear out – I’ll not be stopped again! Don’t you see the gunpowder? Clear out, you little fool, or by Him that made us, you’ll share and share with me!”

“I’ll not leave you, Goddard – you dare not murder me. Oh, come away, go home to little Benny.”

Goddard’s heartstrings still vibrated to that name. His head dropped; “poor little boy!” he murmured.

“Oh, you will go home to him? he will be so glad.”

“No, no – there you’re out!” he cried, his fierceness returning; “no, he left me today howling – I could not coax him back – he’s dropped off too! I am alone in this cursed, black world – disappointed – ruined; they all watch me – they all hate me – my woman, Amy, Benny – and I hate him more than they all hate me – she may marry him now, there’ll be none to hinder. They’re coming – away with you!” He snatched at the candle; Alice shut her hand over it, and as she felt the darkness close around them, she shrieked for help. Goddard laughed; his laugh sounded like the bellowing of a brute.

“You can’t stop me!” he said, and thrusting his hand into his pocket, he pulled out a package of matches, and lighting a single bunch, and throwing it into a pile of rags and old cotton garments that were stowed under the roof, “We’ll soon have light enough!” he cried, and while he said it, the fire took, and the flames streamed upward to the roof.

No human power could now save the determined man. A flood of terror came over Alice; she sprang to the door and opened it. How she descended the flight of stairs, she knew not; nor in what direction she went. Her instincts alone were left to her, and she obeyed them. She could only afterward recall her increasing terror as the light from the mill increased, and the horrible shock of its explosion, when she fainted and fell by the road-side. Her next perception, and it seemed to her like the strange vicissitude of a dream, was of being slowly driven in an open vehicle by a man who supported her head on his breast, whose arm sustained her, and whose warm large hand gently inclosed her little cold one. It still seemed a dream. She was yet but half conscious, and made no motion till she felt lips on her cheek and heard a low whisper of “my beloved Alice!” Her senses returned at once and perfectly; she lifted up her head, looked in her friend’s face, and with a joyous sense of escape, and a far more joyous sense of the dawn of infinite happiness, she clasped her arms around his neck, and dropping her blushing face on his bosom, cried “It is you! thank God!”

Chapter 41

“Les cartes ont toujours raison.”

In the open-door life of Mapleton it was soon known that Alice Clifford was at the mill on the evening of the explosion. Consequently half the street (as Seymour would have worded it) poured into Mrs Clifford’s the next morning to get an explanation of what (as Seymour said again) “the street thought mysterious.” Some came by right of intimacy, and some who substitute social cravings for social rights. Of the latter class, was Miss Clapp, who was attended by Major Donalphonso Hart. She inquired for Miss Herbert, and on being told that she was with her friend, who was too much indisposed to see company, Miss Clapp asked for Mr Lisle. He had gone off trout fishing with young Mr Clifford. “Well, I guess,” said Miss Adeline turning to her escort, “we’ll go in, and see the old lady; ’twill seem friendly.”

The Major bowed acquiescence, saying, “That just meets my feelings, Miss Adeline. I don’t approve of ceremony.” Neither did Mrs Clifford, except as a necessary wall to defend her castle from just such intrusions as she was now compelled to endure. She was never in a more unfit humor to receive unwelcome visitors. She had been a good deal shaken by her child’s appalling risks. She had sent poor Amy off to her mother, and of course had an accumulation of household affairs to dispose of, and to tell the truth, gracious and humane as she was, she had a general shrinking from new people, and a particular antipathy to the genus Clapp, so that Miss Adeline’s reception was rather chill.

“I can’t wonder, ma’am,” she said immediately upon her introduction, “you appear solemnized; sudden events are solemn, as I observed to the Major when we heard the explosion. We were sitting, the Major and me, talking over Washington, and saying what an interesting place it is, so many intelligent members, and such affable foreign ambassadors, and then we went off to speaking of Mrs Tallis; at least I was telling the Major – he had never heard of her before – how they had located in a lovely spot not far from Grace’s sister Esterly, and were after all – you know, ma’am, probably what I allude to?”

“I have heard Mrs Tallis’ name,” replied Mrs Clifford, shrinking from Miss Clapp’s unshrinking style of dilation.

“Well, how uncommon, that Grace has not told you about her, but I suppose she has feelings in that direction. Well, I was just remarking that the Tallises after all were living like two doves – as married couples ought to live – (her eye appealing to the Major) when bang went the mill. ‘Mercy,’ says I. ‘Major, was that a thunderclap?’ ‘Oh, no,’ says he, ‘no Clapp ever produced so unpleasant a sensation.’ A pretty compliment, wasn’t it ma’am? – so quick and original.”

Mrs Clifford was relieved from the necessity of replying, by the entrance of her son Max, who, in his frank, cordial manner, shook hands with the Major, and on his presenting him to “Miss Adeline,” said, “Miss Clapp is not the stranger to me, that I am to her. I have frequently heard her spoken of.” The good-natured creature detected no sinister meaning in the mischievous curl of Max’s lip. She nodded graciously to him, and when he went on to say, “I suppose we owe the honor of Miss Clapp’s visit to Mapleton to her friend, Mr Lisle,” she actually blushed. This phenomenon was followed by another. The Major was disconcerted, and a-hemed, and “hoped Miss Clapp would not owe all her pleasure in Mapleton to Mr Lisle?”

“Oh, no, Major,” rejoined Max, “you know the military candidate always carries the day in our elections, and who shall dare contend with him, who can wield both ‘pen and sword.’” And thrumming on the open piano, he hummed,

“I’ll make thee famous by my pen,

And glorious by my sword.”

Miss Adeline’s white teeth radiated through her smiling lips.

“By the way, Major,” resumed Max, “has anyone apologized to you for Mr Lisle’s spontaneous appropriation of your carriage, last evening?”

The Major said, “It needed no apology; whatever he had was at the service of the ladies; it was all just right.”

“Precisely,” Max said. “Never did horses appear more opportunely. Poor Miss Herbert had sprained her ankle coming down Prospect Hill – she has a touch of the heroic, and she dragged along, upheld by Archy, to the roadside, where they were met by your man passing with your sublime ponies. So Lisle took possession, and drove Miss Herbert home. The girls are pretty well done for with the walk, and the upshot at the mill. Mother,” he added, “I am sure you are impatient to go to them?” She was as impatient as a bird caught by a rash schoolboy. “Miss Clapp will excuse you. She does not stand on ceremony.”

“Would to heaven, she did,” thought Mrs Clifford; but Miss Clapp was not to be headed.

“No, to be sure,” she said. “I make no account of ceremony, and I will excuse your ma with pleasure, after I have spoken a few words in private to her. Gentlemen, you can go out, and walk round. I shall soon make an end, Major.”

There was no escape; the enemy had possession of the citadel. The gentlemen retreated, and Mrs Clifford submitted.

To do Miss Clapp justice, she was slightly abashed. Our gracious Mrs Clifford could be, on occasion, as stately as Minerva. But Miss Adeline felt that it was an opportunity not to be lost, and after a small hesitation, and a few preliminaries, such as may be imagined from Miss Adeline’s indigenous style of conversation, she repeated to Mrs Clifford the “views” and “claims” reported in a former part of her history. Mrs Clifford manifested her impatience by parenthetical interruptions, ringing the bell to give various domestic directions, calling out to Max to drive the hens from Alice’s “flower beds,” etc., etc. Adeline Clapp was as persistent as an east wind, but there was an end, and she concluded with “now, ma’am what do you advise?”

“Nothing, madam. I do not see why you have selected me as your confidential counselor. My only possible advice to you would be to forget this childish idea as soon as possible, and give over the disgusting persecution.”

“Well, now ma’am, I can’t conceive why you should be so roiled. I thought of speaking to you, because Mr Lisle is, as it were, a son to you, and I have always heard you spoken of, ma’am, as a worthy old lady, and I, being an orphan, I thought you would take an interest. I ain’t touchy, and I don’t feel affronted, but I must say you don’t use quite the right words when you mention ‘childish ideas,’ and ‘persecution.’ I know gentlemen – attorneys at law, too – who would not hold it ‘persecution’ to have $200,000 thrown into their hands without conditions – for where I give my heart, ma’am, there I give my fortune.” Miss Clapp felt that she had taken a proud standpoint, and she went on. “I have been constant, and I have had more than one striking temptation to be otherwise.” She cast a glance out the window at the Major’s stalwart figure, and added, “I may have still more, but, as my lawyer says, says he, ‘It is not an open question, Miss Clapp; or rather,’ says he, ‘I had ought to say, Mrs Lisle; for,’ says he, ‘you are the lawful wife of Archibald Lisle, Esquire.’” The party thus named, was, at this moment, coming from the entry through the open parlor door, and heard distinctly (for Miss Adeline had not “that excellent thing in woman,” a low voice) the last clause of her sentence.

“I will leave Mr Lisle to adjust his own legal affairs,” said Mrs Clifford, curtly, and she withdrew, leaving Adeline Clapp, plaintiff, literally versus Archibald Lisle, defendant. Miss Adeline, for the first time in her life, shrank from her position. Her all-sufficiency quailed. She rose from the sofa, put down her veil, put it up again, and fidgeted with her gloves, till Mr Lisle said, with perfect composure, “Miss Adeline, will you be so good as to explain what you have just said? Perhaps I did not hear aright. You are too kind to jest on so serious a subject, and I am sure too just to impute to me an aspiration to the honor of imparting my name to you.” Archibald’s tone was serious. Miss Clapp was perplexed, for though she was too obtuse to penetrate the thinnest veil of irony, she could not quite understand the smiles in Archibald’s eyes, and certain movements of the muscles of his face that were apparent, though he covered his mouth with his handkerchief. But whatever was the character of his emotion, he was firm, and determined, now that the “hobgoblin” had assumed a tangible form, to clutch it.

“Really, Miss Adeline,” he said, “you must explain. I must be absolved from pretensions that, in my wildest fancies, I never conceived. Speak out, Miss Adeline, it is not your style to speak in riddles.” Lisle threw down his hat, folded his arms, and stood with an air of such absolute tranquillity, that Miss Clapp took heart of grace, and believed all was coming out right. “Well, I am sure, Archy, I don’t like riddles. I am always in favor of plain speaking – the Clapps all are. We mean to deal honorable, and above board, and if I have kept dark, and seemed mysterious, it has been owing to peculiar circumstances. You know the fair sex are expected to have their lips buttoned up upon some subjects – to be retiring, as it were – and I have always felt as if it would appear prettier if you were the first to put in the claim.”

“Claim,” interrupted Lisle. “For heaven’s sake, Miss Adeline, tell me what you mean by ‘claim,’ and ‘peculiar circumstances?’”

Fortunately for Lisle, for his heroic coolness was giving way, the Major tapped at the door, and without waiting for an answer, opened it, and perceiving, as he afterward elegantly expressed it, “that his finger was not wanted in that pie,” he bowed and retreated.

“All I ask, Miss Adeline,” said Lisle, resuming his good-natured tone, “is that you should unmistify our relations as briefly as possible, and relieve the Major as well as myself; for I perceive that he fears, as he might professionally express it, that I am taking ‘the shot out of his gun.’”

“Well now, Archibald Lisle,” she replied, “that sounds like old times, familiar and pleasant. Now sit down, friendly. I wish you had a stick to whittle – it would relieve your embarrassment.”

Lisle assured her that he was not in the slightest degree “embarrassed,” and the intrepid woman proceeded, after a slight preface of wonder that he had not “understood her hints last winter in New York,” when she confessed she had “all but spoken out,” to detail minutely the grounds on which she placed the legality and inviolability of a marriage contract with Lisle. She did not falter, or look down, or look aside from beginning to end. Lisle listened without interruption, as he would have listened to the case of a client. She proceeded to state the startling amount of her fortune, and the productive mode of its investment. Still he was silent. She expressed her thorough disapprobation of the “Women’s Rights” movement, and her cheerful acquiescence in his unshackled control of “principal and interest.” And then as she paused, he spoke, and not in an exultant tone, for Lisle’s chivalry toward woman in the abstract extended to woman in the concrete. “Your generosity is prodigious, Miss Adeline,” he said, “but I assure you, you are completely unfettered, and I have no more right than hope in the case – no lien whatever on your bonds and mortgages, and factory stock. Your ‘at the very least $250,000’ – she had thus specified the gross amount – are destined to more fortunate hands than mine. The castle in the air, you have so kindly built for me, must dissolve before one small fact. I was not of age, my dear Miss Adeline, on the memorable night of that mock wedding, and I a little wonder your brother ‘Dates’ should have forgotten that as I was leaving Cambridge, his hospitality anticipated by two days the date of my majority. And even if the stringent administration of the law in Massachusetts held you bound, in spite of my minority, the fact that Judge Eastly had retired from the magistracy prior to the ‘broomstick’ marriage would prevent it being binding – in all events I should doubt the security of my happiness, as it would still depend on the precedents alleged in my behalf by your legal adviser being substantiated by a legal tribunal. So I congratulate you, my dear Miss Clapp, on your escape from these fancied fetters, and trust that love is forging others, for you more fitting!”

“Archy! Archy!” called out Max from the lawn.

Lisle obeyed the summons, and sprang to the door like a released prisoner.

One should be familiar with certain temperaments to understand the exact state of Miss Adeline Clapp’s feelings at this juncture. Like the child with his magic lanthorn, there was one sigh for the picture that had passed, and a bright lookout for the next to come. Not one pang of the “woman scorned,” for, as she afterwards expressed herself in a letter to “Dates,” Archy was fair, and above board, and very polite too!

“Everyone was liable to mistakes. Lisle was something uncommon, but then there were good fish in the sea yet. Major Donalphonso Hart was taller than Lisle, and of a handsome build, and if he were not a New York lawyer, he stood high at the bar in his own county; and she had often seen his name in the papers during the Mexican war; and after all,” she concluded, “he seems more like one of our sort of folks than Archy did!”

Miss Adeline’s was homeopathic practice; her philosophy was adapted to her case. “Similia similibus!”

Chapter 42

“What think’st thou then of me, and this my state;

Seem I to thee sufficiently possessed of happiness, or not?”

When Grace went to her room after the eventful walk to Prospect Hill, she found a letter from her sister on her table. Eleanor wrote as follows:

My Dear Grace:

Uncle Walter came home yesterday; for home, my house is to be to him henceforth, unless you steal him from me. The children were in transports at seeing him. ‘You shall never go away from us again!’ cried May, sitting on one of his knees, while Nel stuck, like a burr, to the other. ‘I never will, May,’ he replied, ‘if your mother can find a place in her little box for me; be it in attic or closet.’ ‘A place for you, Uncle Walter, I guess she can – and if mother can’t, I can; you can double up and sleep with me in my trundle bed!’ Nel put in her claim, ‘You can double up double, Uncle Watty,’ she said, ‘and sleep in my tib.’ Uncle Walter laughed; Nel brushed a tear from his cheek, saying, ‘How funny you are, Uncle Watty! to laugh and cry too!’ ‘I have a room ready for dear Uncle Walter, girls!’ I said, whereupon May shouted, ‘Oh, I know, mother, I know it’s for Uncle Walter you have been fixing the dining room; you might have told me, mother, when I asked you what you got the new paper and paint for; and the new bedstead and bookcase, and easy chair, and everything. It was not fair, mother, not to tell me!’ ‘I only waited, May, till Uncle Walter consented to the arrangement – let him come and see if he can manage in our narrow quarters.’ Uncle Walter, the girls at his heels, followed me. I confess, that as I opened the door, I thought the room looked pleasant with its pretty new carpet, fresh chintz curtains and covers, and the little decorations with which I had endeavored to set off the few comforts I had been able to stow in a space fifteen by twelve. After looking round with the sweetest satisfaction, Uncle Walter seized a vase of fresh flowers, and on pretence of smelling them, with childlike guile, hid his tears; he need not. The soft emotions become his robust, manly face. I remember your once telling him that his ever ready smiles and tears denoted his latent youth, and became him, as blossoms do a rugged old tree. His countenance changed, ‘But Eleanor,’ he said, ‘this was your dining room?’ ‘It was, Uncle Walter, and I am getting, in the place of a mere convenience, a living, loving soul.’ ‘I accept it, my child,’ he said, ‘as freely as you give it, and we won’t quarrel as to which has the best of the bargain, the giver or the receiver. My spirit will have rest with you, and in this “fifteen by twelve,” space for its freest breath. It has been starved, pinched, and chilled long enough in those big Bond Street rooms, where downy beds did not rest me, nor cushioned chairs give me ease. I hated the place from the moment Grace left the house; and to return to it – pah! it would be the wilderness without the manna!’

He has just gone to his room for the night, after talking much of you, and more of himself than I have heard him in his whole life before; and think of it, dear Grace, he has explained the mystery of the letter we found in the green trunk! Poor Uncle Walter! You are burning to hear it? Well – when he was a senior in Yale College (then only nineteen), he lodged in the house of a widow, who had with her a relative, sent there from the interior in search of health. She was a beautiful young creature, educated far above her condition, as many of the women of New England are, and thus destined to marry ill-mated, or live unmarried. Uncle Walter describes her as of a poetic temperament, susceptible, and truthful, ‘a Juliet in years, and passionate and sudden love,’ he said, ‘and yet with the shyness of her northern breeding.’ He fell desperately in love with her (and he is yet a lover!) They went on blindly happy, till a summons came from her home. While the chaise that was to convey her away was waiting at the door, impelled by his generous temper (inconsiderate as you and I well know it to be), he persuaded her to take the only surety he could give her that he would be true to her, in spite of his youth, of their necessary separation, and of the abyss between the orphan child of an humble Yankee farmer, and the son of a pre-Revolution gentleman of New York – that surety was a marriage before starting. So suiting the imprudent act to the hasty word, while her escort was waiting, they went, on pretext of his buying a book for a farewell gift, to a magistrate and were married. In lieu of wedding ring, he put on her arm the fellow of the bracelet he gave you – do you re member Mrs. Herbert’s curiosity about it? They parted immediately. Uncle Walter wrote to her regularly, but received no replies, till one came saying she was forbidden to write, or to receive his letters. He went directly to New York to confess his marriage to his father, as a preliminary to claiming his wife. He arrived on the very evening of Aunt Sarah’s tragedy, and he shrunk from adding a shock and perplexity to his father’s calamities. His wife, he knew, was in a comfortable home, and that ‘no evil,’ as he said, ‘half so bad as the torture of his own feelings could result from a few weeks’, or, if need be, months’ delay.’ How characteristic of dear Uncle Walter, Grace; he always puts off the evil day. His constitutional indolence extends to the decisions of his mind – even impedes the action of his great heart. In less than three months he received a parcel containing the bracelet, with a scrap cut from a country newspaper. He took out his pocketbook, from that a small paper box, and opening it, said, ‘Here, I have kept them ever since.’ He put them into my hand, and turned away. The printed scrap contained only these words: ‘Died, in this village, on Sabbath morning, Helen Dale, aged sixteen years and six months. “The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away – blessed be the name of the Lord!’” The words I have underscored were italicised; it struck me there was some intimation in this, and I asked Uncle Walter ‘if he knew anything of her friends?’ ‘Very little,’ he replied; ‘she sometimes spoke of a sister Judith; and I remember once saying to her, “You seem to stand much in awe of that sister of yours?” She answered gently, “She is much older than I – a good sister, and a mother as well.” But Eleanor,’ he added, ‘I thought nothing of her accessories – we were treading on flowers; our present was our world, and it has filled mine ever since with sweet and bitter memories – it has been the one thing real, the rest but shadows.’ He continued for a long time to walk up and down the room, his head bent forward, and his hands behind him, as is his way, you know, when he is pensive. I think our poor trifling Aunt Fanny is of the shadows he alluded to, and his dear and only love, the ‘substance of things hoped for.’

I gave him your last letter to read. He read it, taking off his spectacles repeatedly and wiping them, and returned it to me without any other comment than a heavy sigh. I understood him. He is as easily seen through as a simple child. At the moment of your rupture with H.C., his old hope revived; your news of the lovers at Mapleton extinguished it. I said, ‘I believe you have seen the little girl Archibald is to marry? How will you like it?’

‘Like it? oh, if he likes it, I shall, of course.’ After a short silence, he exclaimed (one may easily guess the train of thought that led to the exclamation), ‘Thank God, she was saved from Copley! That was a greater good than one could look for in this blundering world.’ Then he went on ejecting his thoughts as they rose, as if unconscious of my presence. ‘With her instincts, her high tone, her clear-sightedness, to fancy such a fellow! I don’t understand it. A fellow with passion without feeling, mind without culture; living here the contemptible life of an old-world idler; turning his fortune and position to no one good purpose or account. And there was Archy. Good Lord! what a difference. He is an exponent of our institutions. He had no vantage-ground to start from, and he has made himself a man among men; a gentleman – a Christian gentleman. Oh, Grace, Grace, what a miss you made of it!’

‘But, dear uncle,’ I said (I could not help putting in a word for you, Grace), ‘Archibald was never Grace’s lover.’

‘He would have been, Eleanor, but for that fellow – I have seen the infallible signs; but there is no help for it now, and we must learn wisdom from old Di, and not “cry for spilt milk.’”

Poor Uncle Walter! he looked as if it would be a long lesson for him to learn. ‘How do you like,’ I asked him, ‘the fashion in which Grace casts her future?’

‘I heartily approve it – God speed her! We are an unlucky family in marriages – your exception only proves the rule. No one can have more than one chance in that line; I had mine, Grace her’s: we both threw them away. Grace, if she married at all, would of course marry her inferior; and Milton’s Adam spoke for all his children, when he said:

‘Among unequals, what society

Can sort, what harmony or true delight?’

After a dreary pause, while his mind went back to the sad disparity that has marred his life, he brightened, and said, ‘Thank God, Grace’s star has not set – such a light as her’s cannot be hid; she has lost the best prize in the lottery. The “next best” is for her to live a true single life; an example much wanted in these times, when the increase of luxury, and the frightful increase of the necessary expense of living, multiplies, at a fearful rate, the number of men and women who are restricted to single life.’

Dear sister, it is a consolation (excuse the word) that your example may send a thrill of courage or of resignation to many hearts. One noble single woman, who devotes her faculties (her ten or her one talent) to the service of God and humanity – it matters not whether it be by maintaining hospitals, reforming prisons, succoring and educating outcast children, or by the noiseless healing visit to the obscure sick, or helpless in mind or body – redeems single life from waste, and from dread and contempt. Let women, who have not a home with a master, and a nursery in it, make themselves welcome in many homes, by making them the brighter and happier for their presence; let them, if so gifted, be artists, poets, sculptors, or painters; let them be leeches, or nurses; let their mission be to the ignorant poor, or the poorer rich; let them fall on any wise and profitable occupation, and the prim and ridiculous maiden-aunt will vanish from our novels, and the Lucretia Mactabs from our comedies, and, what is better, the single gossip will disappear from town and village, and the purring ‘old maid’ from garrets and chimney corners. Why, Grace, dear old Effie is a rebuke to whining wives and careless mothers, with her self-denying, lavish devotion to children, her gentle, kind doings of all sorts to her general family of human kind, and her cheerful economies of her small means of happiness.

If I sigh with Uncle Walter over what I must regard as your great loss, I, with him, too, dwell with satisfaction, with hope and pride, on the mapping out of your future life in your last letter. When I look at your high aims, and survey the great harvest fields to which you point, ready to the hand of the single laborer, I am almost willing to admit that yours is the highest calling, and to receive St Paul’s opinion, as still of authority, that ‘the single are happier if they so abide.’ And further, that it is merely to guard the social relations and dependencies that marriage is so fenced about with honor, respect, and good report.

You see I am not a pharisaical wife; with Uncle Walter I bid you ‘Godspeed!’ and yet, and yet, blessed as I have been and am, the thought of being unwived and unmothered makes me shudder.

And this brings me to my dear husband, from whom I have just received letters. His health is perfectly restored, and he is merely prolonging his stay to complete his examination of the schools of France and Germany. Having once consecrated himself to teaching, he says he will not withdraw from that vocation. He loves young people, and believes he shall work more to his own mind (and as acceptably to his Master) with plastic schoolboys than with a congregation. He proposes to give you a high salary as his musical professor. I have answered him that your ambitions are higher – that you will organize a ‘ragged school,’ or something of that sort. Was I right?

Uncle Walter proposes to go himself to fetch you home, and to take May with him; so with the promise of this discreet escort, farewell till Saturday.

Ever yours,

E. E.

P. S. They say a woman always leaves her most important subject for her postscript. I have yet to tell you that Augusta Tallis and her husband came to see me last week. Never in my life have I seen two people so completely changed. The soul has come to Undine, a soul full of peace, and love to God and man: the right love, and the right man. As to Rupert Tallis, he is as different from the fretted, petulant, cynical man he was, as is a ripe day in June from one cloudy, sleety, teasing, stinging, and out-of-season in March. Augusta’s ‘countenance betokened her heart in prosperity.’ She is beautiful now, Grace; the sweet serenity of her expression harmonizes with her delicate features, and a rich bloom has taken place of the soupçon of rouge that used to soil her cheek. She asked to go up to my nursery, and there she poured out her heart to me. I reserve details till we meet, but such a capacity of love and happiness as she had discovered in Rupert, in herself. ‘No other man had ever been so magnanimous in his forgiveness – never by word or look did he recall her past life.’ She dilated on the contentments of their present quiet life – ‘such richness in home; such interest and beauty in its simple accidents and incidents.’ Oh, Grace! it was a blessed commentary on her past and present. She has kissed the rod, and it has budded.

After caressing my little girls, who, touching the spring of painful memories, called forth inevitable tears, she looked up brightly through them, and with a smile full of sunshine, asked me for all sorts of patterns of baby garments, saying, ‘If it please God to fulfil my hope, I shall look to you, Eleanor, for other models than these – patterns by which to fashion mind and heart!’

E. E.

Chapter 43

“For others say thou dost deserve, and I

Believe it better than reportingly.”

The moral atmosphere that surrounded our friends at Mapleton during the two days that followed the explosion of the mill, might be fairly typified by what in vulgar parlance is termed a “dry storm;” when the wind stands due east, and does “stand,” not a whiff stirring to relieve the stagnation, and blow away the heavy, dark, dreary mist that settles over and spoils everything. But toward the close of the second day the “clearing-up” began. Walter Herbert and May arrived, the wind decidedly changed, and “the sun came out.”

The fresh guests were cordially welcomed. Mrs Clifford’s house retained that elastic quality, still characterising a few country homes, by virtue of which they expand at the will of the owner. She harbored none of those small selfishnesses permitted to declining age; numbers did not burden her, noise did not annoy her, exigencies and expedients did not perplex her. She could give up her own apartment, turn her only son out of doors, or do anything a pedantic housekeeper would not do, for a guest that she or Alice loved, or Max desired, or that needed the succor of her hospitality.

The first bustle of arrival was over, and May’s noisy demonstrations of gladness were subsiding, when Archibald entered, and was met by his honest old friend (his heart betrayed him!) with an air of resignation very different from the feus de joie that usually marked his meetings with his favorite. However, he summoned courage for the sympathy due, as he supposed, to Lisle’s happy prospects, and looking from him to Mrs Clifford, said, “I do not see the young lady whom I too am come to fall in love with.”

Mrs Clifford blushed, as if by proxy for Alice, and replied, “My daughter would have been here to welcome you, but an accident happened the other evening, which threw her off the hinges, and she has not been well since. I have just sent for the doctor,” she added in a lowered voice to Grace; “I don’t understand Alice’s condition – she is not ill, but she seems fluttered, and flighty, and just now she was quite irritated at Max because he delayed in bringing her a letter from the mail – of course there was no letter of any special interest to expect; and when Max brought one, she did not even break the seal while I was in the room – that dreadful fright has put her all out.”

“She has seemed very cheerful since,” replied Grace.

“Yes, but,” persisted the anxious mother, “her spirits have alternated with a deep pensiveness. I wish you would coax her to come down – perhaps seeing your uncle will give her a fresh start.”

Grace went on her errand. Her uncle’s eye followed her. “My child is looking not quite well,” he said, “pale and drooping – and you, Archy, have you too lost ground since you came here? or is it this accident that has knocked you all up?”

Lisle made no reply.

Mrs Clifford looked toward him, smiling with a sweet secret satisfaction at her heart, not doubting the cause of his eclipse, and said, “My daughter Alice is our mainspring – nothing goes quite right with any of us when she is away.”

“Ah, yes; I understand!” said Uncle Walter, and clapping Lisle on the shoulder, he hummed,

‘When I came roun’ by Mauchline town,

(for Mauchline, sing Mapleton, Archy),

‘Not dreading any body,

My heart was caught before I thought,

And by a Mauchline lady.’

“Why, Archy, you are falling back into your old trick of blushing like a girl. I thought you had outgrown it.”

Archibald murmured something unintelligible, which conveyed but one idea – that he had something to blush for. His eye glanced at Mrs Clifford. There was a sweet motherly smile on her lips – it was a dagger to poor Lisle. “Would to heaven,” he thought, “I had made an opportunity instead of waiting for one, to tell her of my weakness and presumption, but here I am, wearing false colors before my best friend.”

“Alice!” said Grace, as she entered her friend’s room, “you do not look as if you needed the doctor!”

Alice did not; her cheek was like a fresh-blown rose, and her eyes were moistened with such tears as well up from nature’s deepest fountain of happiness. She seemed fluttering with the joy before her, like a bird at the open door of its cage. She held two letters in her hand, one open, and written all over, margins and corners full.

“A love letter?” asked Grace.

“Yes; but how could you guess it – and from whom? Guess me that guess, dear Grace.”

The gravity of Grace’s face was a striking contrast to the playfulness of Alice, as she replied, “Is it from Mr Lisle?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Alice, throwing up her hands, “an Egyptian darkness has settled upon this house! No, no, it is not from Mr Lisle – it has nothing to do with Archy. If you will let that ring be quiet, that you have taken off and put on twenty times in the last twenty seconds, and listen to me, I will tell you from whom it comes.” No listening could have been more satisfactory than Grace’s now became. “This letter you see, Grace, is directed to my mother. You must take it to her for me; and you must give her some explanations before she reads it, which I will now make to you. Poor dear mother, she will feel horribly at first, I know, for she had set her hopes in another direction; but that was not foreordained, and cannot come to pass. I have my love story to tell you, Grace – it’s very short, just begun indeed. I shall only give you a few facts, your fancy shall do the filling-up. A year ago, last June, I went with some friends to Rye beach. The morning after our arrival there, I saw this dear little Daisy of ours on the beach, with her nurse, who told me the child had been brought there with her mother, both for the benefit of sea air. The mother was ill at the hotel. I made friends with the child, and the next morning she brought me an invitation to her mother’s room. I found her, a little woman, wasted and very ill, and made almost perfect through suffering. She had married – oh, long ago – and married for love, Grace, a sort of wild Irishman, who took her by storm. He was handsome and eloquent, she said. She had quite a fortune from an aunt, and no parents, no protector, only one brother – a boy then. Her husband turned out a drunkard, and everything horrid. He squandered her fortune. In the first three years of her marriage, she had two boys born. Seven years ago Daisy was born, the half-alive, suffering child she is now. Well, dear Grace, in this fiery furnace of affliction, there was an angel – Mrs Maltby’s brother Charles – Charles Fletcher.”

“The writer of these letters, Alice?”

“The same – the same – the same; the best, the most charming – the noblest –”

“The ‘facts,’ if you please, my dear child; I am to weave the ‘filling-up,’ you know.”

Alice, smiling, reverted to her narrative. “Charles Fletcher was getting on as a lawyer in Boston when his sister’s affairs came to the worst. He wrote for the papers, translated for the booksellers, worked day and night, to supply her necessities, and the wretch, her husband, drained her of these precious earnings, by threatening to take her children from her. Her health failed, and her fears lest this poor little helpless Daisy should fall into her father’s hands drove her near to insanity. Her brother got possession of the boys, and sent her, with Daisy, to Rye beach. The day after I first saw her she suddenly became much more ill, and begged me to write to her brother that she felt her death rapidly approaching. She had no help or comfort on earth but Charles, she said. I wrote, and he came. She lived a month; we took care of her together. Such a brother he was, Grace – so cheerful, and yet so sympathizing, with such sweet heavenly thoughts for her, ‘just the food she needed,’ she said. Her weak, wearied spirit seemed to rise on his strong wings of faith and hope. ‘The moment Charles opens the door,’ she said, ‘and I see his face, and hear his voice, it seems as if sunshine and sweet fresh air came into my room.’ Oh, Grace, such a brother as he was!”

“And such a lover!” said Grace, imitating Alice’s fervent tone.

“No, no, Grace. The mill had to explode before we came to that part.”

“Ah! I comprehend; but go on with your ‘facts.’”

“Mrs Maltby took a strange fancy to me, and would not let me out of her sight, except for the refreshment of a drive or walk.”

“Charles Fletcher had a simultaneous necessity of the same refreshment?”

“Yes, Grace, that is one of my facts. A few days before Mrs Maltby died, she was thrown into spasms by a letter from her husband threatening to take possession of the children. In this extremity, Charles resolved to take the boys beyond his reach, to California, and establish them in San Francisco. He had previously received great offers from friends there, which he had rejected, preferring Boston, with the slow gains of his profession, to running after sudden fortune. But what was to be done with Daisy? I offered – I could not help it, you know – to take her home with me. Her father did not know of my existence, and would have no clue to her. I wrote to my mother to ask her co-operation; a mere outline – no ‘filling-up,’ Grace. My mother needs none; want is the key to her supplies. We have scrupulously kept our secret. One week after his sister’s death, Charles Fletcher sailed for California.”

“And you had no explanation before parting?”

“Not in words. It would have been neither prudent nor honorable in Mr Fletcher, his future being uncertain, and a provision for the children his first duty.”

“But there was a ‘filling-up’ Alice? looks, tones, as expressive as words, and as binding to your hearts?”

“We could not help that, Grace; nor could we help speaking when we met.”

“Oh, no; your romantic meeting was a fact that deserved the ‘filling-up’ you gave it. But how quietly we all received the idea that you had been picked up and brought home by a passing traveler!”

“Luckily for us, the parlor was dark and empty when we came in, and Mr Fletcher just laid me on the sofa, and made his escape. To tell the truth, Grace, I was more delighted than surprised to see him. His expected arrival with commercial despatches was mentioned in a Californian letter, which my eye strangely fell upon the other evening, when I was looking over Archy’s shoulder at the gossip from Newport – the time that I rushed out, and Archy followed me – do you remember, Grace?”

Grace nodded affirmatively. She well remembered.

“I was in a horrid fright,” resumed Alice; “I knew Maltby had threatened a deadly revenge, and that he was in New York to await, as I supposed, Mr Fletcher’s arrival; and feeling that Charles was near at hand, I had a most vivid imagination of the worst that could happen. But the fellow took advice, and instead of presenting a revolver, he met Charles at his landing with a writ for illegal detention of the children. Charles gave security for his appearance, and rushed up here. He had but one night to stay. He was delayed on his way, and providentially arrived late. We exchanged some ten words, Grace – just as good as ten volumes. Perhaps you think I was too soon won, but you will not when you know him. Think what a good brother he has been; and good brothers always make good husbands.”

Grace was the last person in the world to give a faint sympathy. “It does not matter, dear Alice,” she said, “whether your heart has been taken by storm or siege, so it has fallen into the right hands. The Eastern conjurer, who makes a plant spring from the ground, bud, blossom, and bear fruit while you are looking at it, shadows forth such a love as yours. But what a queer world it is! I am ready to rub my eyes, and ask if I am awake?”

“Well!” said Alice, pausing, and looking steadfastly in Grace’s eyes, and smiling very archly, “you are not wide awake yet, Grace – but you soon will be; it’s dawn now, daylight is coming.”

“Give me the letter for your mother,” said Grace, her heart smiling at Alice’s prognostic, if she controlled her lips; “I long to have my task over, Alice; I dread her disappointment.”

“Oh, so do I; but I did not suspect you knew her delusion. Dear mother! she is a poor dissembler. Who would have taken me for the most discerning person of this superior family? I am the only one that has not been stone-blind. Go, dear Grace; my mother will be perfectly reconciled as soon as she knows Charles – I am sure of that.” Alice spoke from a natural, and, happily, a well-founded faith in her lover. Grace’s face was turned from her, or she would have seen the intimation in it that no man on earth could fill up the chasm made by the loss of Archibald. “Besides,” continued Alice, “my mother must have been disappointed at last – Mr Archy has not profited by his excellent opportunity of falling in love with me, and never would.”

Grace stood with the door half open, awaiting Alice’s words; she reclosed it. “You are right, dear Alice,” she said, “and your frankness shames me. I will not have any further concealment from you. When Mr Lisle came back to me in the wood, he told me what passed before you parted from him; he was forced to it, I believe, by a sense of the wrong he had done you, and the greater wrong he had done to his own truth.”

“Oh, he told you more than that! You need not confess, Grace – your burning cheek tells his whole story, and I can tell it in two lines:

‘My life has been a task of love,

One long, long thought of you.’

“You are a diviner, Alice.”

“Oh no, Grace, we have been playing at child’s play – French blindfold, and my wand alone touched the right person. Why, Grace, I have seen from the first day we were together in New York that he was in love with you; I saw it in the glance of his eye, I heard it, Grace, in the tone of his voice. You see I know the signs, my dear. He was one man when you were present, sensitive to his fingers’ ends; and another when you were absent, careless, listless, quite uninspired.”

“You are not inspired, Alice,” Grace replied, with rather a sad smile. “There is a mixture of human error with your wonderful clairvoyance. Mr Lisle frankly confessed to me that, from the moment my uncle told him of my engagement to Copley, he had struggled for the mastery of the passion that he acknowledged had mastered him; and from that moment – he did not say so – but I saw it, plainly, I had sunken fathoms deep in his opinion.”

“To rise like a goddess from the waves, Grace, as soon as he knew you were free, and how nobly you had freed yourself.”

“He does not know it, Alice.”

“Does not know it! – you did not tell him? I shall. I am no longer bound by my old, foolish promise. I will go this minute and tell him, and heap coals of fire on his head. I’ll teaze him a little first, though – he deserves it from me. I will copy his moon-struck manner, and quote his own words in his tragic tone: ‘Do you – can you – will you love me.’ Oh, it was shabby of him to offer me an empty casket, but I’ll forgive him, and send him off to you.”

“No, no, dear Alice, I’ll not have him challenged; he must find out the truth before long, and then, if – perhaps –”

“No ifs and perhapses, dear Grace. You must have your own way if you must; it will all soon be settled like a book, and then,” she added, her sweet face radiant, “what is to become of your fine-spun plans for your single life? It would have been great; as Max said of Sylvia May, ‘you would have made a splendid old maid,’ but one can’t shirk one’s destiny, and I knew you were not to make a partie carrée with that glorious trio of Scott’s heroines, Rebecca, Minna, and Flora MacIvor. No, you and I must sink down into the inglorious herd of married women.”

“Now go, you do not look quite so much as you did like the ‘awful messenger that drew Priam’s curtain at the dead of night;’ go to my dear mother, and all good angels help you – and me. And oh, Heaven grant that she may never know what a tug poor Archy has had to do the duty she expected of him.”

That “it never rains, but it pours,” is an adage destined to be exemplified that evening at Mapleton. Grace returned to her uncle from her long interview with Mrs Clifford, and told him his hostess begged to be excused till the morning. “Upon my word,” he said, looking into Grace’s eyes, where he saw the marks of recent tears, and yet, in her whole expression, the serenity of the securest happiness; “Upon my word, this is an odd place, this Mapleton – breezy, showers, but no clouds. One wonders where the rain comes from.”

“You will not be left to wonder long, dear uncle. Secrecy has no affinity with Mapleton. A guest is expected tomorrow, and at his arrival, whatever may now seem mysterious will be explained to you.”

“I am glad of it. Life is all rather a puzzle to me, and I am not fond of any superfluous mysteries, nor am I fond of being left alone, as you know, my child. May has run off to that weird little Daisy, as you call her, and poor Archy, with all the marks of love upon him, is musing by the lake side. Ah, here comes that pleasant lad, Max.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Max, “and I hope I have come to some pleasant purpose, for I have brought the last Boston paper for you.” “Hallo, Archy,” he called out to Lisle, who was coming in from his lake-side musing, “here’s a note for you. I’ll ring for candles. I would give five dollars to see the inside of that note, Archy.” Candles were brought, but Lisle seemed not to partake Max’s curiosity, for after recognizing the handwriting, he remained as if indifferent to open the note or not. Mr Herbert eagerly unfolded the paper, and at the first paragraph that struck his eye, he exclaimed, “Lord bless us!” and reading it through, he finished with dropping the paper, clapping his hands, and crying “excellent, perfectly satisfactory!” and he prolonged every syllable of the last word, so as to emphasize the full contentment of his heart. “Not that we, any of us, care a straw,” he added, resuming the paper, “but it’s so fitting. Hear, hear friends. ‘Newport Items: – The fashionables assembled at this world renowned watering place, have been startled by the announcement of Mr H. C*****’s (the millionaire) engagement to the beautiful, rich, and accomplished Miss C****** (“six stars, Grace, after the C”). The contracting parties (with the bride elect’s intellectual mother) have left for New York, and are to be married privately in Grace Church.”

Walter Herbert looked where he always first looked for sympathy, to Grace, and exclaimed, “Why, my child, you do not even look surprised.”

“I am not,” she answered coolly. “I had a letter from my stepmother, this morning, containing the news.”

“You had! Why did you not tell me?”

“For the best reason in the world, I forgot it.”

“That’s odd. The letter must be rich. Let me see it, Grace.”

She drew it from her pocket. At the first indication of Copley’s name, Lisle’s eye instinctively turned to Grace’s face, and fell to perusing it as one reads a document for life or death, but he read nothing there: not a muscle moved; there was no change from red to pale, or pale to red, till extending the letter toward her uncle, Lisle took it to pass it. Their eyes met. There is a power in the eye to transmit the spirit swifter than the telegraph, more potent than the spoken or the written word. When the cry of “land! land!” assured Columbus of his fulfilled hope, we venture to say there was not a more effulgent joy in his face than in Archibald Lisle’s when Grace’s eye met his.

Walter Herbert read his sister-in-law’s letter to himself. We transcribe it for the benefit of our readers.

My Ever Dear Grace:

I have often remarked to you that the affairs of this life never turn out according to our short-sighted expectations. L’homme propose, et Dieu dispose. Who could have expected that Mrs Tallis’ rash interference with your prospects would have led to Anne’s gain. But so it is. (Then followed a deal of twaddle; ‘she trusted that Anne would not be dazzled with her brilliant future, and that she herself should “continue humble, and occupied with her duties,’” etc., etc.) The letter concluded, “As I have often remarked, everything is mixed in this world, and truly, my dear Grace, my happiness is alloyed by the thought of your disappointment.

I felt it right for obvious reasons early to apprize you of Anne’s engagement, as you might hear it at a time when it would not be pleasant to manifest emotion; now, forewarned, you will be forearmed.

I feel it also my duty as your only surviving mother, to express the hope that you will learn wisdom from this trial, and put a rein (while you are still young) on your too impulsive temperament. As I often say, a wrong step may (as in the present case) be irretrievable. My kind love to our dear Eleanor. Mr Copley and Anne would add theirs, but they are at the yacht race. It is a true solace to a mother’s heart to find them so harmonious in their tastes.

Think with what advantages she will make the tour of Europe. She is wild with joy. But pardon me, dear Grace I would not hurt your feelings. I always say there is nothing so sacred as feelings.

Ever affectionately, and sincerely your attached,

Marianna Herbert.

P. S. – I hope to see brother Walter in town, and to make satisfactory arrangements about shutting up my house. I regret the inconvenience to him, but of course I do not feel it consistent with my duty to Anne, to let her go without me.

“Bon voyage to them all,” exclaimed Uncle Walter, chuckling, as he threw aside the letter; but after a moment his countenance assumed a graver aspect. He was not a man to look upon a sin, or even a folly with anything so harsh as scorn, or so comfortable as complacency. “Miserable creatures,” he said, “of ritual religion, ritual moralities, and human policies. We are well quit of them, dear Grace, Ah, friends! many a relation is better in the ending, than in the beginning.”

“Much, much better,” said Grace, with an emphasis that startled Archibald from a reverie, in which hope beamed from a mass of bitter feelings, self-reproaches for past blindness, false judgments, fluctuating purposes, and compromises with the affections – the affections of heavenly birth, and destiny, too sacred to be approached by that genius of universal tinkering – compromise.

Chapter 44

“Marry! that marry is the very theme

I came to talk of –”

It was not till after a night of meditation and prayer, and its blessed sequence, sweet sleep, that Mrs Clifford was able to appear with serenity before her family. It was hard to surrender hopes so long cherished, and so nearly fulfilled; and very difficult to readjust the glass of faith to this new point of view; but she did it, and accepted this trial, as she had others far more grievous, with the sweet and unreserved acquiescence of a submissive child.

Charles Fletcher came to Mapleton, and (we borrow Max’s expressive slang phrase) “he pitched into all their hearts.” He had not been an inmate of her family twenty-four hours, when Mrs Clifford confided to Walter Herbert that she could not have believed she should “so soon have come to love him.” No one else, knowing the wealth of her affection, and how conjoined were faith and love in her life, would have doubted it. “It’s a good sign,” she said, as if to justify her sudden liking, “that the young man has returned from California unsmitten with the contagious fever that rages there –”

“There!” interrupted Uncle Walter; “bless your soul, madam, the infection has spread over the whole country, and through every class, except children at both ends of life – simple babes, and elderly sages, such as you and I, who, in simplicity, have become like little children, and are so near the end that we can see as well as believe, that it will not profit us to gain the whole world and lose our own souls.”

“Ah, Mr Herbert,” replied Mrs Clifford, “sound health of mind as well as of body, is the best security, at all ages, and in all circumstances, against contagion; and soundness all this young man’s conduct indicates. He went to California for an excellent object, and having attained that, he returns eagerly to his profession in Boston – to slow gains, and frugal progressive life.”

“You need no studied reasons, Mrs Clifford, to justify your liking, or dear little Alice’s sudden love. He is frank and manly – a man more of deeds than words – and cheerful, a quality we old people love as we love the light; charming manners, too – a rare grace in these northern latitudes; how should he not enter your heart, which in one respect is unlike the kingdom of heaven, for ‘broad is the way, and many there be that go in thereat.’”

“I don’t know how you have done it, young man,” he said to Charles Fletcher, an hour afterward, “but your arrival has had a prodigious effect on us all. We were like so many out of tune instruments before you came; now we are in harmony, and play the best of music.”

“What do you mean, Uncle Walter?” asked May, who stood beside him on the sofa, extremely puzzled – “that you are an instrument to play on, like Grace’s piano?”

“No, child; I am nothing but an old bagpipe – fit only for weddings and such merrymakings.”

“Weddings!” May caught the word with girlish instinct. “Oh I like merry music – I’ll have you, dear old Bagpipe, and play on you at Miss Alice’s wedding, and Grace’s wedding! Won’t that be fun?”

“Grace’s wedding!” echoed Uncle Walter; “Grace will never have a wedding – so she says, May.” Uncle Walter’s expressive whistle, sotto voce, finished his sentence.

“Oh, I don’t believe that, Uncle Walter. Grace,” she called out to Miss Herbert, who was intent on a passage in a book to which Lisle, standing beside her, had called her attention, “Grace, don’t you mean to be married, and have a wedding?” (“Ces enfants terribles!”) If Grace heard, she had no need to reply, for, luckily, May’s attention was diverted by Max’s entrance. He rushed in, his high color heightened, and his eye sparkling. The coming of the joyous lad was usually like letting in a fresh mountain breeze.

“What now, Max?” asked his mother.

“Oh ‘there’s a good time coming!’” he sang, “come to Mapleton. I expect to see all our ‘rocks of Gibraltar,’ Miss Looly, Miss Sarah, and all, with wedding rings on yet – it’s getting epidemical.”

“What do you mean, Max, if you mean anything?”

“I do; there is more than one swallow, or one pair of swallows, come to make our coupling summer in Mapleton – ‘Single-side’ no longer. Martin Seymour stopped me under the old elm, and was giving me the programme of his affairs, when the Major drove up with his splendid greys – and Miss Adeline, of course.”

“Let those vulgar people pass on, Max. What of Seymour?”

“Mother! the Major and the Clapp-trap are such good game – but they’ll keep; and since you will have it so, I’ll first tell you about Seymour, and tell you in his excellent Yankee vernacular. He says that ‘the saw, and one or two other trinkets were saved when the mill blew up, and that he calculates to rebuild soon, and build better than ever; and except that it was awful to have Uncle Nat blowed into eternity, it was a providence, for now nobody disputed that he was deranged, and that was a lasting comfort, both on account of here and hereafter, to Amy and her folks; and it was healing to see how the street pitied him. And Amy had agreed, if they were both spared, to be married next Thanksgiving. She did not feel as if it would be consistent to be married sooner. So, dear mother, there’s all of your special protégés, Martin and Amy. Now for the Mexican hero! He beckoned to me as he passed, and pointed to the inn. I followed. He conducted me to Miss Clapp’s parlor, and after a little hesitation, and precious little too, he said, with a salute, à la militaire (’pon my honor, mother), to the ever-blooming Adeline, that he had had the happiness to obtain Miss Adeline’s affections, and the promise of her hand; whereupon I bowed to the bride-elect, or elector, and complimented her in the novel phrase, ‘Veni, vidi, vici!’ Miss Clapp informed me that her brother, Orondates, is expected this evening, and they proceed tomorrow to New York, there to be married, and to embark for the tour of Europe, Greece – think of Adeline reconnoitering the Parthenon! – Egypt, and the Holy Land! I suppose this tour was the Major’s bait. Was it a lover of yours, Alice, or of one of your friends, who, when he was rejected, whined out, ‘Would the tower of Europe make any difference?’ By the way, Archy,” continued Max, without waiting for an answer, “Miss Adeline inquired if I delivered a note she gave me for you some days ago. I did, and told her so. She says it’s all-important to the Major, and to her, that it should be answered before her marriage, and she begged me to be sure to remind you.”

Archibald started at the sound of his own name. Neither he nor Grace had heard one word of Max’s previous rattle, they being bent over the honeysuckle at the door-side, and apparently absorbed in a botanical investigation. “A note!” he said, as if mustering his recollections; “oh! I remember – I beg Miss Adeline’s pardon!” and thrusting his hand into the depths of his pocket, he brought up an unsealed note.

“Read it aloud, Lisle,” said Uncle Walter; “we all know about your entanglement with that native; let’s have the last of her.”

The last of her! No, she and our ultra fashionable friends, whose nuptials were solemnized in Grace Church, will be returned upon us by some foreign satirist (Thackeray, if such meat were fit for the gods), as “General Jeremiah E. Bangs and lady,” or Mrs Horace Copley – as the case may be – a fine lady “from the States,” who shall remark at a Baden ball that some future “Miss Newcome’s toilette would do at a Fifth Avenue party,” and these exceptional people will be received, by the European reading public, as illustrating specimens of the social results of democratic institutions.

Lisle did read the note aloud. It simply contained a request that he would furnish Miss Clapp with a copy of the certificate of the date of his birth, “to make the Major and me feel secure,” wrote Miss Adeline.

“Secure!” repeated Lisle, laughing; “providentially, as Miss Adeline would interpret it, I can do so without delay. In the pocket of my surtout which I had on when I received your telegraphic despatch, Alice, there is a letter from poor old Dr Bay, in which is enclosed said certificate. I perceived the drift of that, but have never read the letter, nor thought of it since the hour I received it.”

As Lisle went into the entry for the letter, Uncle Walter said, with a significant smile – Uncle Walter’s lips had hardly been out of a smile for the last few hours – “Our friend Lisle is losing his mind.”

“Oh, no, sir,” said Alice, springing up, and whispering in his ear “he has just found it!”

As she bent over him, her warm dimpled cheek was close to his lips. He kissed it, and looking at her lover with mock gravity said, “By Jove! I could not help it!”

Lisle returned with the letter open in his hand. After glancing his eye at the contents, his countenance changed, and asking Max to put the certificate into Miss Clapp’s possession, he hurried off to his apartment. May betrayed the curiosity that others suppressed. “Uncle Walter,” she asked, in a low voice, “did you see how frightened Mr Lisle looked?”

“Frightened? no, May.”

“I don’t mean frightened, but so different. Think Mr Lisle had bad news in that letter?”

“Pshaw! No, May; it was an old letter from a dead man.”

“Mercy, Uncle Walter! I should think he would be frightened. Do go and ask him what is in the letter – do!”

“I will, May; I am one of the ‘obedient parents’ who have succeeded to the obedient children of former days.” So, glad of a pretext, he went.

Uncle Walter was watching the drifting of every straw in Lisle’s path. He tapped at Archibald’s door, as if in passing to his own, and called out, “What tidings, Lisle, from the dead to the living?”

Archibald opened the door with the open letter still in his hand. His face shone with a new discovered happiness. “Come in, my dear friend,” he said, “and read this letter – it concerns you.”

“Concerns me!” exclaimed Mr Herbert, extremely puzzled, and he hurried out his spectacles, and sat down to the reading by the deepening twilight.

“You may skip the first page,” suggested Lisle; “that is merely an outpouring of the good old doctor’s affection – he loved me from the beginning.”

“And have not I loved you ‘from the beginning,’ you scamp? If there were any truth in instinct you should belong to me, for I have loved you as doting fathers love their ‘dear and only sons;’ but to the doctor’s letter.” (We look over Mr Herbert’s shoulder).

Esteemed Young Friend:

(Thus began the doctor’s epistle.)

Feeling the pillars of my earthly tabernacle decaying, I am setting my house in order, and among my relative duties is that of transcribing the records I have made of the birth of those whom it has been my happiness to introduce upon this sublunary scene. Accordingly, you will find herein the accompanying certificate under my own hand and seal. And truly it gives me satisfaction to say (I am no flatterer, Mr Archibald) that my instrumentalities have been seldom so rewarded as in your case; and it is borne in upon my mind to attest my approbation of your life. Its safe commencement, I may claim to be due (always under Providence) to the skill, acquired during my studies with the celebrated surgeon of the ever-lamented Princess Charlotte.

“Three cheers for Dr Bay!” exclaimed Uncle Walter.

My satisfaction has been great in seeing you ripen into a God-fearing and man-loving man – the latter being abundantly proved by your affectionate and dutiful conduct to your late excellent father, your maintenance of his relict, and your unfailing respect and kindness to her, which, she not being a bird of your feather, was not so easy as for water to run down hill; and further by your education of her children, not required by the opinion of society, they being but half blood. And further, was noted by me, your exemplary care in life and death of the interesting orphan Letty, besides numerous benefactions to ‘Uncle Phil’ and others, of which my hands have been the trusted and secret medium. I have taken pride, too, in your uncommon success in your profession, which I foresaw; your legal intellect being clearly indicated to me from the first, by a remarkable cerebral formation; and something better than pride I have felt (and often expressed in private duty) that you have maintained your integrity, and neither tarried long at the wine cup, or fallen into ‘the narrow pits’ abounding in a city thick set with temptations and flooded with vice –

“Doctor Bay, I shake hands with you!” exclaimed Walter Herbert. “Why, Lisle, he was as loving a fool as I am; but what is this?”

I am now about to impart what I term a professional secret, obtained in my medical walk, and therefore not to be disclosed but for providential reasons. I hear that you are in close friendship with Walter Herbert, Esq., of New York city, and deem that my secret may be a pleasure or a beacon to you.

Your mother had a sister fifteen years younger than herself, the prettiest specimen I ever met. I attended her through a galloping consumption that rapidly developed after a visit to the seashore. She died a fortnight after your birth. I had brought her in my arms, and put her in your mother’s easychair at her bedside. She had seemed quite comfortable that morning; all at once, in a breath as it were, the paleness of death came over her; she fumbled at the wristband of her gown, I unbuttoned it, and a bracelet that was too large for her arm – she had emaciated – fell over her hand –

“I see! I see!” cried Uncle Walter; “light your candles, my dear boy, my eyes fail me!”

“She took it up, kissed it, and said, ‘Do, sister, send it to him!’ There was a flutter of the heart, and she was gone! Now, Mr Archibald, your mother was one of the silent kind, over-prudent (if that can be said of a woman); she ever wore a seal upon her lips; but sudden grief – Helen was her idol – mastered her, and her heart gushed out like an opened fountain, and many things, she said (taken unawares) not suitable to repeat; but the amount was that Helen had been privately married to Walter Herbert; that your mother, jealous of the child’s honor, had a boiling indignation against Mr Herbert, and had forbidden all communication with him till such time as he should come and claim his wife. Your mother was a set woman, and Helen of a compliant disposition, a reed in her hands – I speak in no disrespect to your honored parent, for she had the virtues related to setness, justice, rectitude, love, etc.; and besides she had just gone through a period of nervousness, and what was wrong in her usually, was more so, as is often the case with ladies in circumstances. That last look of Helen’s, and her last action, impressed me. Her love, clearly, was stronger than death, and it was borne in upon my mind that your mother’s judgment had been over strict, and when I looked upon the deceased, so meek and beautiful, so without spot and blemish, like sacrificial doves, I felt for him whom she had loved. And now hearing he is your friend, and thinking he may have long ago repented of all that was wrong in this lamented marriage, you can, at your discretion, inform him, that one, much his elder, pitied more than he blamed him, and that I trust it may cheer his latter days to find his chosen young friend is, as it were, akin to him!”

Walter Herbert dropped the letter, and murmuring, “Thank God, thank God,” he fell upon Archibald’s neck, and kissed him as tenderly as the father kisses the boy at his knee. As soon as he could command his voice, he said, “The good doctor is right – it is another and a blessed tie to you, Archy; henceforth I hold you as my son. At a future time – not now; now I am too full of both joy and sorrow – I will tell you how my whole life has been pervaded and colored by this early and only love.” And then, as Archibald said, he raised his eyes, and extending his arms in invocation, exclaimed, “My angel in heaven!” and his face was radiant as if the star of his morning beamed from heaven upon him.

The twilight had deepened into night, the new moon had dropped behind the hills, the evening star had followed her, Mars had traversed a broad space in the firmament, Jupiter had risen far enough above the horizon to drop a thread of light athwart the lake, and the lowest star in Orion shone over the eastern hills, when Archibald and Grace, who had been in the light of these skyey processes, but not observant of them, returned from floating on the lake in Max’s “sulky.” Finding all the family retired to bed, and oblivious of that periodical duty, they sat down together on the doorstep. They had taken no note of the evening hours. These hours had glided from them in mutual histories of their past misjudgments, distrusts, blunders, and failures, and in a blending of their present joy that, like a rushing flood, swept them all away.

They were like two beatified spirits on the threshold of another world – behind them darkness, entanglement, and obstruction, before them a land of promise, bright with love and faith, lights now glowing in their firmament, and there to shine forever and forever.

A momentary silence, surpassing the offices of words, was broken by a stealthy footstep and a low pettish cry; and turning round, they saw, by the light of the entry lamp, little May stealing in, in her long white night-dress, looking like one of the child-angels in St Cecilia’s choir.

“Oh, Grace,” she said, “why don’t you come to bed? I have been awake, and waiting for you, ever – ever – ever so long.” Grace kissed her, and smiled, but said nothing. May looked from Grace to Archibald: there too she met a smile of ineffable happiness, and the bright little creature, brightening all over, exclaimed exultant, “Oh, I know – I know you are to be married, Grace, and we shall have your wedding, and Uncle Walter will be my bagpipe.”

“You remind me, my dear child,” said Mrs Clifford, after a long and satisfactory conversation the next day, with Grace, “of a dear friend of mine (that unnamed friend was the great religious and moral writer who is acknowledged throughout Christendom as a beloved master and teacher) who, when he was a young man, addressed a letter to two young women, his intimate friends, adjuring them to consecrate themselves to a single life, in order to demonstrate how happy, beneficent, and honored it might be. He, not long after, married one of these young women, Grace.”

“And, dear Mrs Clifford, he did not ‘love Cæsar less that he loved Rome more.’ He did not disparage one condition, by preferring the other. Am I not true to my theories? While I contended that there might be golden harvests reaped in the fields of single life, that it was not a condition to be dreaded, scorned, or pitied, but infinitely preferable to the bankruptcies in married life, did I not admit there was a happier fate? – and is not that fate mine?”

“It is – it is! You are ‘equal to either fortune,’ Grace, ‘married or single.’ May others profit by your theories.”

THE END

Colophon

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