There was nobody, then, to counsel poor Elsie, except her father, who
had learned to let her have her own way so as not to disturb such
relations as they had together, and the old black woman, who had a
real, though limited influence over the girl. Perhaps she did not need
counsel. To look upon her, one might well suppose that she was
competent to defend herself against any enemy she was like to have.
That glittering, piercing eye was not to be softened by a few smooth
words spoken in low tones, charged with the common sentiments which
win their way to maidens' hearts. That round, lithe, sinuous figure
was as full of dangerous life as ever lay under the slender flanks and
clean-shaped limbs of a panther.
There were particular times when Elsie was in such a mood that it must
have been a bold person who would have intruded upon her with reproof
or counsel. "This is one of her days," old Sophy would say quietly to
her father, and he would, as far as possible, leave her to herself.
These days were more frequent, as old Sophy's keen, concentrated
watchfulness had taught her, at certain periods of the year. It was in
the heats of summer that they were most common and most strongly
characterized. In winter, on the other hand, she was less excitable,
and even at times heavy and as if chilled and dulled in her
sensibilities. It was a strange, paroxysmal kind of life that belonged
to her. It seemed to come and go with the sunlight. All winter long
she would be comparatively quiet, easy to manage, listless, slow in
her motions; her eye would lose something of its strange lustre; and
the old nurse would feel so little anxiety, that her whole expression
and aspect would show the change, and people would say to her, "Why,
Sophy, how young you're looking!"
As the spring came on, Elsie would leave the fireside, have her
tiger-skin spread in the empty southern chamber next the wall, and lie
there basking for whole hours in the sunshine. As the season warmed,
the light would kindle afresh in her eyes, and the old woman's sleep
would grow restless again,--for she knew, that, so long as the glitter
was fierce in the girl's eyes, there was no trusting her impulses or
movements.
At last, when the veins of the summer were hot and swollen, and the
juices of all the poison-plants and the blood of all the creatures
that feed upon them had grown thick and strong,--about the time when
the second mowing was in hand, and the brown, wet-faced men were
following up the scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass,
(falling as the waves fall on sickle-curved beaches; the foam-flowers
dropping as the grass-flowers drop,--with sharp semivowel consonantal
sounds,--_frsh_,--for that is the way the sea talks, and leaves all
pure vowel-sounds for the winds to breathe over it, and all mutes to
the unyielding earth,)--about this time of over-ripe midsummer, the
life of Elsie seemed fullest of its malign and restless instincts.
This was the period of the year when the Rockland people were most
cautious of wandering in the leafier coverts which skirted the base of
The Mountain, and the farmers liked to wear thick, long boots,
whenever they went into the bushes. But Elsie was never so much given
to roaming over The Mountain as at this season; and as she had grown
more absolute and uncontrollable, she was as like to take the night as
the day for her rambles.
At this season, too, all her peculiar tastes in dress and ornament
came out in a more striking way than at other times. She was never so
superb as then, and never so threatening in her scowling beauty. The
barred skirts she always fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous
muslins; the diamonds often glittered on her breast as if for her own
pleasure rather than to dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet hardly
left her arm. Without some necklace she was never seen,--either the
golden cord she wore at the great party, or a chain of mosaics, or
simply a ring of golden scales. Some said that Elsie always slept in a
necklace, and that when she died she was to be buried in one. It was a
fancy of hers,--but many thought there was a reason for it.
Nobody watched Elsie with a more searching eye than her cousin, Dick
Venner. He had kept more out of her way of late, it is true, but there
was not a movement she made which he did not carefully observe just so
far as he could without exciting her suspicion. It was plain enough to
him that the road to fortune was before him, and that the first thing
was to marry Elsie. What course he should take with her, or with
others interested, after marrying her, need not be decided in a hurry.
He had now done all he could expect to do at present in the way of
conciliating the other members of the household. The girl's father
tolerated him, if he did not even like him. Whether he suspected his
project or not Dick did not feel sure; but it was something to have
got a foot-hold in the house, and to have overcome any prepossession
against him which his uncle might have entertained. To be a good
listener and a bad billiard-player was not a very great sacrifice to
effect this object. Then old Sophy could hardly help feeling
well-disposed towards him, after the gifts he had bestowed on her and
the court he had paid her. These were the only persons on the place of
much importance to gain over. The people employed about the house and
farmlands had little to do with Elsie, except to obey her without
questioning her commands.
Mr. Richard began to think of reopening his second parallel. But he
had lost something of the coolness with which he had begun his system
of operations. The more he had reflected upon the matter, the more he
had convinced himself that this was his one great chance in life. If
he suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity could hardly,
in the nature of things, present itself a second time. Only one life
between Elsie and her fortune,--and lives are so uncertain! The girl
might not suit him as a wife. Possibly. Time enough to find out after
he had got her. In short, he must have the property, and Elsie Venner,
as she was to go with it,--and then, if he found it convenient and
agreeable to lead a virtuous life, he would settle down and raise
children and vegetables; but if he found it inconvenient and
disagreeable, so much the worse for those that made it so. Like many
other persons, he was not principled against virtue, provided virtue
were a better investment than its opposite; but he knew that there
might be contingencies in which the property would be better without
its incumbrances, and he contemplated this conceivable problem in the
light of all its possible solutions.
One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from himself: Elsie had some
new cause of indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him. With
the acuteness which persons who make a sole business of their own
interest gain by practice, so that fortune-hunters are often shrewd
where real lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the young
man up at the school where the girl had been going of late, as
probably at the bottom of it.
"Cousin Elsie in love!" so he communed with himself upon his lonely
pillow. "In love with a Yankee schoolmaster! What else can it be? Let
him look out for himself! He'll stand but a bad chance between us.
What makes you think she's in love with him? Met her walking with him.
Don't like her looks and ways;--she's thinking about _something_,
anyhow. Where does she get those books she is reading so often? Not
out of our library, that's certain. If I could have ten minutes' peep
into her chamber now, I would find out where she got them, and what
mischief she was up to."
At that instant, as if some tributary demon had heard his wish, a
shape which could be none but Elsie's flitted through a gleam of
moonlight into the shadow of the the trees. She was setting out on one
of her midnight rambles.
Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently his cheeks
flushed with the old longing for an adventure. It was not much to
invade a young girl's deserted chamber, but it would amuse a wakeful
hour, and tell him some little matters he wanted to know. The chamber
he slept in was over the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at this
season. There was no great risk of his being seen or heard, if he
ventured down-stairs to her apartment.
Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting project, arose
and lighted a lamp. He wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust
his feet into a pair of cloth slippers. He stole carefully down the
stair, and arrived safely at the door of Elsie's room. The young lady
had taken the natural precaution to leave it fastened, carrying the
key with her, no doubt,--unless, indeed, she had got out by the
window, which was not far from the ground. Dick could get in at this
window easily enough, but he did not like the idea of leaving his
footprints in the flower-bed just under it. He returned to his own
chamber, and held a council of war with himself.
He put his head out of his own window and looked at that beneath. It
was open. He then went to one of his trunks, wich he unlocked, and
began carefully removing its contents. What these were we need not
stop to mention,--only remarking that there were dresses of various
patterns, which might afford an agreeable series of changes, and in
certain contingencies prove eminently useful. After removing a few of
these, he thrust his hand to the very bottom of the remaining pile and
drew out a coiled strip of leather many yards in length, ending in a
noose,--a tough, well-seasoned _lasso_, looking as if it had seen
service and was none the worse for it. He uncoiled a few yards of this
and fastened it to the knob of a door. Then he threw the loose end out
of the window so that it should hang by the open casement of Elsie's
room. By this he let himself down opposite her window, and with a
slight effort swung himself inside the room. He lighted a match, found
a candle, and, having lighted that, looked curiously about him, as
Clodius might have done when he smuggled himself in among the Vestals.
Elsie's room was almost as peculiar as her dress and ornaments. It was
a kind of museum of objects, such as the woods are full of to those
who have eyes to see them, but many of them such as only few could
hope to reach, even if they knew where to look for them. Crows' nests,
which are never found but in the tall trees, commonly enough in the
forks of ancient hemlocks, eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a
quick eye and hard climb to find and get hold of, mosses and ferns of
unusual aspect, and quaint monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as
Nature delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like
any naturalist or poet.
Nature, when left to her own freaks in the forest, is grotesque and
fanciful to the verge of license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees
does not always require clipping to make it look like an image of
life. From those windows at Canoe Meadow, among the mountains, we
could see all summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, and
General Jackson on horse-back, done by Nature in green leaves, each
with a single tree. But to Nature's tricks with boughs and roots and
smaller vegetable growths there is no end. Her fancy is infinite, and
her humor not always refined. There is a perpetual reminiscence of
animal life in her rude caricatures, which sometimes actually reach
the point of imitating the complete human figure, as in that
extraordinary specimen which nobody will believe to be genuine, except
the men of science, and of which the discreet reader may have a
glimpse by application in the proper quarter.
Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like monstrosities, that
one might have thought she had robbed old Sophy's grandfather of his
fetishes. They helped to give her room a kind of enchanted look, as if
a witch had her home in it. Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like
branch, strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines which
strain the smaller trees in their clinging embraces, sinking into the
bark until the parasite becomes almost identified with its support.
With these sylvan curiosities were blended objects of art, some of
them not less singular, but others showing a love for the beautiful in
form and color, such as a girl of fine organization and nice culture
might naturally be expected to feel and to indulge, in adorning her
apartment.
All these objects, pictures, bronzes, vases, and the rest, did not
detain Mr. Richard Venner very long, whatever may have been his
sensibilities to art. He was more curious about books and papers. A
copy of Keats lay on the table. He opened it and read the name of
_Bernard C. Langdon_ on the blank leaf. An envelope was on the table
with Elsie's name written in a similar hand; but the envelope was
empty, and he could not find the note it contained. Her desk was
locked, and it would not be safe to tamper with it. He had seen
enough; the girl received books and notes from this fellow up at the
school,--this usher, this Yankee quill-driver;--_he_ was aspiring to
become the lord of the Dudley domain, then, was he?
Elsie had been reasonably careful. She had locked up her papers,
whatever they might be. There was little else that promised to reward
his curiosity, but he cast his eye on everything. There was a
clasp-Bible among her books. Dick wondered if she ever unclasped it.
There was a book of hymns; it had her name in it, and looked as if it
might have been often read;--what the _diablo_ had Elsie to do with
hymns?
Mr. Richard Venner was in an observing and analytical state of mind,
it will be noticed, or he might perhaps have been touched with the
innocent betrayals of the poor girl's chamber. Had she, after all,
some human tenderness in her heart? That was not the way he put the
question,--but whether she would take seriously to this schoolmaster,
and if she did, what would be the neatest and surest and quickest way
of putting a stop to all that nonsense. All this, however, he could
think over more safely in his own quarters. So he stole softly to the
window, and, catching the end of the leathern thong, regained his own
chamber and drew in the lasso.
It needs only a little jealousy to set a man on who is doubtful in
love or wooing, or to make him take hold of his courting in earnest.
As soon as Dick had satisfied himself that the young schoolmaster was
his rival in Elsie's good graces, his whole thoughts concentrated
themselves more than ever on accomplishing his great design of
securing her for himself. There was no time to be lost. He must come
into closer relations with her, so as to withdraw her thoughts from
this fellow, and to find out more exactly what was the state of her
affections, if she had any. So he began to court her company again, to
propose riding with her, to sing to her, to join her whenever she was
strolling about the grounds, to make himself agreeable, according to
the ordinary understanding of that phrase, in every way which seemed
to promise a chance for succeeding in that amiable effort.
The girl treated him more capriciously than ever. She would be sullen
and silent, or she would draw back fiercely at some harmless word or
gesture, or she would look at him with her eyes narrowed in such a
strange way and with such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to
himself they were too much for him, and would leave her for the
moment. Yet she tolerated him, almost as a matter of necessity, and
sometimes seemed to take a kind of pleasure in trying her power upon
him. This he soon found out, and humored her in the fancy that she
could exercise a kind of fascination over him,--though there were
times in which he actually felt an influence he could not understand,
an effect of some peculiar expression about her, perhaps, but still
centring in those diamond eyes of hers which it made one feel so
curiously to look into.
Whether Elsie saw into his object or not was more than he could tell.
His idea was, after having conciliated the good-will of all about her
as far as possible, to make himself first a habit and then a necessity
with the girl,--not to spring any trap of a declaration upon her until
tolerance had grown into such a degree of inclination as her nature
was like to admit. He had succeeded in the first part of his plan. He
was at liberty to prolong his visit at his own pleasure. This was not
strange; these three persons, Dudley Venner, his daughter, and his
nephew, represented all that remained of an old and honorable family.
Had Elsie been like other girls, her father might have been less
willing to entertain a young fellow like Dick as an inmate; but he had
long outgrown all the slighter apprehensions which he might have had
in common with all parents, and followed rather than led the imperious
instincts of his daughter. It was not a question of sentiment, but of
life and death, or more than that,--some dark ending, perhaps, which
would close the history of his race with disaster and evil report upon
the lips of all coming generations.
As to the thought of his nephew's making love to his daughter, it had
almost passed from his mind. He had been so long in the habit of
looking at Elsie as outside of all common influences and exceptional
in the law of her nature, that it was difficult for him to think of
her as a girl to be fallen in love with. Many persons are surprised,
when others court their female relatives; they know them as good young
or old women enough,--aunts, sisters, nieces, daughters, whatever they
may be,--but never think of anybody's falling in love with them, any
more than of their being struck by lightning.
But in this case there were special reasons, in addition to the common
family delusion,--reasons which seemed to make it impossible that she
should attract a suitor. Who would _dare_ to marry Elsie? No, let her
have the pleasure, if it was one, at any rate the wholesome
excitement, of companionship; it might save her from lapsing into
melancholy or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a kind of
superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three
septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent
idea, her whole frame would have been thrice made over, counting from
her birth, she would revert to the natural standard of health of mind
and feelings from which she had been so long perverted. The thought of
any other motive than love being sufficient to induce Richard to
become her suitor had not occurred to him. He had married early, at
that happy period when interested motives are least apt to influence
the choice; and his single idea of marriage was, that it was the union
of persons naturally drawn towards each other by some mutual
attraction. Very simple, perhaps; but he had lived lonely for many
years since his wife's death, and judged the hearts of others, most of
all of his brother's son, by his own. He had often thought whether, in
case of Elsie's dying or being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he
might not adopt this nephew and make him his heir; but it had not
occurred to him that Richard might wish to become his son-in-law for
the sake of his property.
It is very easy to criticize other people's modes of dealing with
their children. Outside observers see results; parents see processes.
They notice the trivial movements and accents which betray the blood
of this or that ancestor; they can detect the irrepressible movement
of hereditary impulse in looks and acts which mean nothing to the
common observer. To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. This boy
sits with legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never saw;
his grandfathers both died before he was born, but he has the movement
of the eyebrows which we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper
of the other.
These are things parents can see, and which they must take account of
in education, but which few except parents can be expected to really
understand. Here and there a sagacious person, old, or of middle age,
who has _triangulated_ a race, that is, taken three or more
observations from the several standing-places of three different
generations, can tell pretty nearly the range of possibilities and the
limitations of a child, actual or potential, of a given stock,--errors
excepted always, because children of the same stock are not bred just
alike, because the traits of some less known ancestor are liable to
break out at any time, and because each human being has, after all, a
small fraction of individuality about him which gives him a flavor, so
that he is distinguishable from others by his friends or in a court of
justice, and which occasionally makes a genius or a saint or a
criminal of him. It is well that young persons cannot read these fatal
oracles of Nature. Blind impulse is her highest wisdom, after all. We
make our great jump, and then she takes the bandage off our eyes. That
is the way the broad sea-level of average is maintained, and the
physiological democracy is enabled to fight against the principle of
selection which would disinherit all the weaker children. The
magnificent constituency of mediocrities of which the world is made
up,--the people without biographies, whose lives have made a clear
solution in the fluid menstruum of time, instead of being precipitated
in the opaque sediment of history----
But this is a narrative, and not a disquisition.