ALMOST sixteen months had passed since the dewless September morning,
when Mabel had gathered roses in the garden walks, and her brother's
return had shaken the dew with the bloom from her young heart. It was
the evening of Christmas-day, and the tide of wassail, the blaze
of yule, were high at Ridgeley. Without, the fall of snow that had
commenced at sundown, was waxing heavier and the wind fiercer. In-doors,
fires roared and crackled upon every hearth; there was a stir of busy
or merry life in every room. About the spacious fire-place in the
“baronial” hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that
in the parlor, a cluster of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened,
from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant
surf the stream of the juniors' converse.
Nearest the mantel, on the left wing of the line, sat the three months'
bride, Imogene Barksdale, placid, dove-eyed, and smiling as of yore,
very comely with her expression of satisfied prettiness nobody called
vanity, and bedecked in her “second day's dress” of azure silk and her
bridal ornaments. Her husband hovered on the outside of the ring, now
pulling the floating curls of a girl-cousin (every third girl in
the country was his cousin, once, twice, or thrice-removed, and none
resented the liberties he, as a married man, was pleased to take), anon
whispering in the ear of a bashful maiden interrogatories as to her
latest admirer or rumored engagement; oftenest leaning upon the back
of his wife's chair, a listener to what was going on, his hand lightly
touching her lace-veiled shoulders, until her head gradually inclined
against his arm. They were a loving couple, and not shy of testifying
their consent to the world.
“They remind me irresistibly of a pair of plump babies sucking at
opposite ends of a stick of sugar candy!” Rosa Tazewell said aside to
the hostess, as the latter paused beside her on her way through the hall
to the parlor.
“The candy is very sweet!” replied Mrs. Aylett, charitably, but laughing
at the conceit--the low, musical laugh that was at once girlish in its
gleefulness, yet perfectly well-bred.
Mr. Aylett heard it from his stand on the parlor-rug, and sent a
quick glance in that direction. It was slow in returning to the
group surrounding him. He had married a beautiful woman--so said
everybody--and a fascinating, as even everybody's wife did not dispute.
In his sight, she was simply and entirely worthy of the distinction he
had bestowed upon her; an adornment to Ridgeley and his name. From
their wedding-day, his deportment toward her had been the same as it was
to-night--attentive, but never officious; deferential, yet far removed
from servility; a manner that, without approximating uxoriousness, yet
impressed the spectator with the conviction that she was with him first
and dearest among women; a partner of whom, if that were possible, he
was more proud than fond--and of the depth and reality of his affection
there could be no question.
She declined to seat herself in the circle, although warmly importuned
by her guests thus to add brilliancy to their joyous party, yet remained
standing near Rosa, interested and amused by the running fire of
compliment and badinage that went to make up the hilarious confusion. If
the family record had been consulted, the truth that she had counted
her thirty-second summer would have astonished her husband, with her new
neighbors. Apparently she was not over twenty-five. Her chestnut hair
was a marvel for brightness and profusion, her broad brow smooth and
white, her figure, as Winston had described it to his sister, rounded,
even to voluptuousness, yet supple as it had been at fifteen. In her
cheeks, too, the blushes fluctuated readily and softly, and when she
smiled, her teeth showed like those of a little child in size and
purity. Her voice matched her beauty well, never loud, always melodious,
with a peculiar, gliding, legato movement of the graceful sentences, for
the pleasing effect of which she was indebted partly to Nature, and
much more to Art. She appeared on this evening in a green silk dress,
matronly in shade and general style, but not devoid of coquettish
arrangement in the square corsage, the opening of which was filled with
foam-like puffs of thulle, threatening, when her bust heaved in mirth
or animated speech, to overflow the sheeny boundaries. A chaplet of
ivy-leaves encircled her head, and trailed upon one shoulder; her
bracelets were heavy, chased gold without gems of any kind; a single
diamond glittered--a point of prismatic light at her throat. Her
wedding-ring was her only other ornament.
“Very sweet, I grant you, and very flavorless,” returned Rosa. “And
alarmingly apt to turn sour upon the stomach. I had rather be fed upon
pepper lozenges.”
“You should have been born in the Spice Islands,” said the hostess,
tapping the dark cheek with her fore finger. “But we could not spare you
from our wassail-cup to-night, my dear Lady Pimento!”
She bent slightly, that the flattery might reach no other ear. She may
not have known that Rosa's Creole skin was at a wretched disadvantage,
as seen against the green silk background; but others noticed it, and
thought how few complexions were comparable to the wearer's. She had the
faculty of converting into a foil nearly every woman who approached her.
“Thank you! So I am pimento, am I?” queried Rosa, pertly. “And each of
us is to personate some condiment--sweet, ardent, or aromatic--in the
exhilarating draught! Which shall Mr. Harrison here be?
“'Cinnamon or ginger, nutmeg or cloves?'”
“That is a line of a college drinking-song!”
The speaker was a young man of eight-and-twenty; who sat between Rosa
and Mabel, and whose attentions to the latter were marked. Of medium
height, with sandy hair and whiskers, high cheek-bones, that gave a
Gaelic cast to his physiognomy; which was remarkable for nothing in
particular when at rest, and followed somewhat tardily the operations
of his mind when he talked, he would probably have been the least likely
person present to rivet a stranger's notice but for the circumstance
that he played shadow to the host's sister and was Mrs. Aylett's
brother. With regard to the feeling entertained by the former of those
ladies for him, there were many and diverse opinions, but his sister's
partiality was unequivocally exhibited. Of her three brothers, this--the
youngest, the least handsome, and the only bachelor--was her favorite.
She took pains to apprise his fellow-guests of this interesting fact by
petting him openly, and exerting her fullest artifices to bring him out
in becoming colors.
“It is,” she answered him now, admiringly. “What a memory you have, my
dear Herbert! Now I am never positive with whom to credit a quotation.
I recollect, since you have spoken, that your famous quartette-club used
to render that with much eclat, and how it was encored at the brilliant
private concert you gave in behalf of some popular charity or other.”
Thus encouraged, Mr. Dorrance proceeded to enlarge the fragment:
“Nose, nose, jolly red nose!
Where got you that jolly red nose?
Nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves,
These gave me this jolly red nose.'
“You did not quote the third line correctly, Miss Tazewell.”
“Never having been a college bacchanalian, I am excusable for the
inaccuracy,” she retorted. “I did not even know where I picked up
the foolish bit. Having ascertained the origin to be of doubtful
respectability, I shall never use it again.”
“My sister has alluded to our quartette-club,” pursued Mr. Dorrance,
turning from the caustic beauty to Mabel, without noticing the
impertinent thrust. “It was the most successful thing of the kind I ever
knew of, being composed of thoroughly-trained musicians--amateurs, of
course--and practising nothing but classic music, the productions of the
best masters. There is something both instructive and elevating in such
an association.”
“Especially when the theme of their consideration is the 'Jolly Red
Nose,'” interposed the wicked minx at his other elbow.
Two giddy girls tittered, unawed by Mrs. Aylett's proximity and her
brother's owl-like stare at his critic.
“You may not be aware, Miss Tazewell, that the lyric to which you
have reference is celebrated, both for its antiquity, and the pleasing
harmonies that must ever commend it to the taste of the true lover of
music; although I allow that to a disciple of the modern and more flimsy
school of this glorious art, it may seem puerile and ridiculous,” he
remarked, in grandiose patronage. Then, again to Mabel, “There were four
of us--as I said--all students. What is it, Clara?”
“I have dropped my bracelet upon the floor, between you and Miss
Tazewell,” stooping to shake out Rosa's full skirts from which the
trinket fell with a clinking sound.
Three gentlemen darted forward to pick it up, but her husband noted
approvingly that while she accepted it graciously from the lucky finder,
and thanked the others for their kindly interest in the fate of her
“bauble,” she held out her arm to her brother, that he might clasp it
again in its place. Affable always, winning whomsoever she chose to
admiration of her personal and mental endowments, she never departed
from matronly decorum. The company agreed silently, or in guarded
asides, that she was charming. No tongue--even the most reckless or
venomous--ever lisped the dread word, levity, in connection with her
name.
“Take care, my dear brother! you will pinch me!” those near heard
her say, and she twisted the golden circlet that the clasp might be
uppermost.
Rosa's alert ear caught the hurried murmur which succeeded, and was
muffled, so to speak, by her affectionate smile of gratitude.
“What were you about to say? Will you never learn prudence?”
“The dove has talons, then?” mused the eavesdropper, “But what was he in
danger of revealing?”
If the interdicted revelation had connection, close or remote, with the
famous quartette club, he kept well away from it after this reminder,
beginning, when he resumed his seat, to discourse upon the comparative
excellence of wood and coal fires, of open chimney-places and stoves.
Mrs. Aylett smiled an engaging and regretful “au revoir” to the circle,
and passed on to look after the comfort and pleasure of her elder
visitors, and Rosa soon discovered that her awakened curiosity would be
in no wise appeased by listening to the steady, pattering drone of
Mr. Dorrance's oration. Oratorical he was to a degree that excited the
secret amusement of the facile Southern youths about him. With them,
the art of light conversation had been a study from boyhood, the topics
suitable for and pleasing to ladies' ears carefully culled and
adroitly handled. To amuse and entertain was their main object. Erudite
dissertations upon science and literature; abstruse arguments--whatever
resembled a moral thesis, a political, religious, or philosophical
lecture met with the sure ban of ridicule from them, as from the fair
whose devoted cavaliers they were. If they laughed, when it was safe
and not impolitic to do so, at the ponderous elocution of the Northern
barrister, they marvelled exceedingly more at Mabel's indulgence of
his attentions. That a girl, who, in virtue of her snug fortune and
attractive face, her blood and her breeding, might, as they put it, have
the “pick of the county,” if she wanted a husband, should lend a willing
ear to the pompous platitudes, the heavy rolling periods of this alien
to her native State--a man without grace of manner or beauty--in their
nomenclature, “a solemn prig,” defied all ingenuity of explanation, was
an increasing wonder outlasting the prescribed nine days. He rode with
the ill assurance of one who, accustomed to the sawdust floor, treadmill
round, and enclosing walls of a city riding-school, was bewildered
by the unequal roads and free air of the breezy country. He talked
learnedly of hunting, quoting written authorities upon this or that
point, of whom the unenlightened Virginians had never heard, much
less read; equipped himself for the sport in a bewildering arsenal
of new-fangled guns, game-bags, shot-pouches, and powder-horns, with
numerous belts, diagonal, perpendicular, and horizontal, and in the
field carried his gun a la Winkle; never, by any happy accident, brought
down his bird, but was continually outraging sporting rules by firing
out of time, and flushing coveys prematurely by unseasonable talking and
precipitate strides in advance of his disgusted companions.
Yet he was not a fool. In the discussion of graver matters--politics,
law, and history--that arose in the smoking-room, he was not to be put
down by more fluent tongues; demolished sophistry by solid reasoning,
impregnable assertions, and an array of facts that might be prolix, but
was always formidable--in short, sustained fully the character ascribed
to him by his brother-in-law, of a “thoroughly sensible fellow.”
“No genius, I allow!” Mr. Aylett would add, in speaking of his wife's
bantling among his compatriots, “but a man whose industry and sound
practical knowledge of every branch of his profession will make for him
the fortune and name genius rarely wins.”
With the younger ladies, his society was, it is superfluous to observe,
at the lowest premium civility and native kindliness of disposition
would permit them to declare by the nameless and innumerable methods in
which the dear creatures are proficient. To Rosa Tazewell he could not
be anything better than a target for the arrows of her satire, or the
whetstone, upon the unyielding surface of which she sharpened them. But
she showed her prudential foresight in never laughing at him when out
of his sight, and in Mabel's. At long ago as the night of Mr. Aylett's
wedding-party at Ridgeley, her sharp eyes had seen, or she fancied they
did, that the hum-drum groomsman was mightily captivated by the daughter
of the house, and she had divined that Mrs. Aylett's clever ruses for
throwing the two together were the outworks of her design for uniting,
by a double bond, the houses of Dorrance and Aylett. She knew,
furthermore, that Herbert Dorrance had travelled with the Ridgeley
family for three weeks in October, and that he had now been domesticated
at the homestead for ten days. Mrs. Aylett's show of fondness for him
was laughable, considering what an uninteresting specimen of masculinity
he was; but the handsome dame was too worldly-wise, too sage a judge of
quid pro quo, to entice him to waste so much of the time he was addicted
to announcing was money to him, for the sake of a good so intangible as
sisterly sentimentality.
Unless there were some substantial and remunerative ulterior object to
be gained by his tarrying in the neighborhood, cunning Rosa believed
that “dear Bertie” would have been packed off to Buffalo, or whatever
outlandish place he lived in, so soon as the bridal festivities were
over, and not showed his straw-colored whiskers again in Virginia in
three years, at least, instead of running down to the plantation every
three months.
“If such an ingredient as the compound, double-distilled essence of
flatness is to be infused into the wassail-cup, it is he who will supply
it!” thought the spicy damsel, with a bewitching shrug of the plump
shoulder nearest him, while engaged in a lively play of words with a
gentleman on her other hand. “What can possess Mabel to encourage him
systematically in her decorous style, passes my powers of divination.
Maybe she means to use him as a poultice for her bruised heart. In that
case, insipidity would be no objection.”
Mabel had not the air of one whose heart is bruised or torn. That she
had gained in queenliness within the past year was not evidence of
austerity or the callousness that ensues upon the healing of a wound.
The Ayletts were a stately race, and the few who, while she was in her
teens, had carped at her lack of pride because of her disposition to
choose friends from the walks of life lower than her own, and criticised
as unbecoming the playful familiarity that caused underlings and
plebeians--the publicans and sinners of the aristocrat's creed--to
worship the ground on which she trod--the censors in the court of
etiquette conferred upon her altered demeanor the patent of their
approbation, averring, for the thousandth time, that good blood would
assert itself in the long run and bring forth the respectable fruits of
refinement, self-appreciation, and condescension. The change had
come over her by perceptible, but not violent, stages of progression,
dating--Mrs. Sutton saw with pain; Rosa, with enforced respect--from the
sunset hour in which she had read her brother's sentence of condemnation
upon her then betrothed, now estranged, lover. After that one evening,
she had not striven to conceal herself and her hurt in solitude. Neither
had she borrowed from desperation a brazen helmet to hide the forehead
the cruel letter had, for a brief space, laid low in the dust of
anguished humiliation.
If a whisper of her disappointment and the attendant incidents
crept through the ranks of her associates, it died away for want of
confirmation in her clear level-lidded eyes, elastic footfall and the
willingness and frequency with which she appeared and played her part
in the various scenes of gayety that made the winter succeeding her
brother's marriage one long to be remembered by the pleasure-seekers
of the vicinity. She had not disdained the assistance of her
sister-in-law's judgment and experience in the choice of the dresses
that were to grace these merry-makings, and, thanks to her own naturally
excellent taste, now tacitly disputed the palm of elegant attire with
that lady. Her Christmas costume, which, in many others of her age,
would have been objected to by critical fashionists, as old-maidish and
grave, yet set off her pale complexion--none of the Ayletts were rosy
after they reached man's or woman's estate--and heightened her distingue
bearing into regal grace. Yet it was only a heavy black silk, rich and
glossy as satin, cut, as was then the universal rule of evening
dress, tolerably low in the neck, with short sleeves; bunches of
pomegranate-blossoms and buds for breast and shoulder-knots, and among
the classic braids of her dark hair a half-wreath of the same.
She had the valuable gift of sitting still without stiffness, and not
fidgetting with fan, bouquet, or hand-kerchief, as she listened or
talked. Rosa's mercurial temperament betrayed itself, every instant, in
the bird-like turn of her small head, the fluttering or chafing of her
brown fingers, and not unfrequently by an impatient stamp, or other
movement of her foot that exposed fairy toe and instep. Contemplation
of the one rested and refreshed the observer; of the other, amused and
excited him. Mr. Dorrance's phlegmatic nature found supreme content in
dwelling upon the incarnation of patrician tranquillity at his right
hand, and he regarded the actions of his frisky would-be tormentor very
much as a placid, well-gorged salmon would survey, from his bed of
ease upon the bottom of a stream, the gyrations of a painted dragon fly
overhead.
A lull in the general conversation--the reaction after a hearty laugh at
a happy repartee--gave others besides Mabel the opportunity of profiting
by his learned remarks.
“But does not that seem to you a short-sighted policy,” he was urging
upon his auditor, with the assistance of a thumb and forefinger of one
hand, joined as upon a pinch of snuff, and tapping the centre of
the other palm; “does not that appear inexcusable profligacy of
extravagance, which fells and consumes whole surface forests of
magnificent trees--virgin growth--(I use the term as it is usually
applied, although, philosophically considered, it is inaccurate)
giants, which centuries will not replace, instead of seeking beneath
the superficial covering of mould, nourishing these, for the exhaustless
riches, carboniferous remains of antediluvian woods, hidden in the
bowels of your mountains, and underlying your worn-out fields?”
Rosa was shaking with internal laughter--she would give no escape except
through her dancing eyes.
Indeed, Mr. Dorrance's was the only staid countenance there, as Mabel
said, pleasantly, moving her chair beyond the bounds of the ring, “I,
for one, find the combustion of the upper forest growth too powerful,
just at this instant. This is a genuine Christmas-storm--is it not?
Listen to the wind?”
In the stillness enjoined by her gesture, the growl of the blast in the
chimney and in the grove; the groaning, tapping, and creaking of the
tree branches; the pelting sleet and the rattle of casements all
over the house brought to the least imaginative a picture of out-door
desolation and fireside comfort that prolonged the hush of attention.
Tom Barksdale's pretty wife slipped her hand covertly into his tight
grasp, and their smile was of mutual congratulation that they were
brightly and warmly housed and together. Rosa, preternaturally grave and
quiet, lapsed into a profound study of the mountain of red-hot embers.
Several young ladies shuddered audibly, as well as visibly, and were
reassured by a whispered word, or the slightest conceivable movement of
their gallants' chairs nearer their own.
“I think we have the grandest storms at Ridgeley that visit our
continent,” resumed Mabel thoughtfully. “I suppose because the house
stands so high. The wind never sounds to me anywhere else as it does
here on winter nights.”
Yielding to the weird attraction of the scene invoked by her fancy, she
arose and walked to the window at the eastern extremity of the hall,
pulling aside the curtain that she might peer into the wild darkness.
The crimson light of the burning logs and the lamp rays threw a strongly
defined shadow of her figure upon the piazza floor, distinct as
that projected by a solar microscope upon a sheeted wall; sent long,
searching rays into the misty fall of the snow, past the spot from
which she had her last glimpse of Frederic Chilton, so many, many months
agone, showing the black outline of the gate where he had looked back to
lift his hat to her.
What was there in the wintry night and thick tempest to recall the
warmth and odor of that moist September morning, the smell of the
dripping roses overhead, the balmy humidity of every breath she drew?
What in her present companion that reminded her of the loving clasp that
had thrilled her heart into palpitation? the earnest depth of the eyes
that held hers during the one sharp, yet sweet moment of parting--eyes
that pledged the fealty of her lover's soul, and demanded hers then and
forever? His conscience might have been sullied by crimes more heinous
than those charged upon him by her brother and his friends; he might--he
HAD--let her go easily, as one resigns his careless hold upon a
paltry, unprized toy; but when her hand had rested thus in his, and
his passionate regards penetrated her soul, he loved her, alone and
entirely! She would fold this conviction to her torpid heart for a
little while before she turned herself away finally from the memories
of that love-summer and battle-autumn of her existence. If it aroused
in the chilled thing some slight pangs of sentiency, it would do her no
hurt to realize through these that it had once been alive.
She saw a shadow approaching to join itself to hers upon the whitened
floor without, before Mr. Dorrance interrupted her reverie by words.
“The fury of the tempest you admire proves its paternity,” he said, with
a manifest effort at lightness. “It emanates from the vast magazines of
frost, snow, and wintry wind that lie far to the north-east even of my
home, and THAT is in a region you would think drear and inhospitable
after the more clement airs of of your native State.”
“We have very cold weather in Virginia sometimes,” returned Mabel, still
scanning the sentinel gate-posts, and the pyramidal arbor-vitae trees
flanking them.
Her gaze was a mournful farewell, but she neglected none of the
amenities of hospitality. She was used to talking commonplaces.
“We feel it all the more, too, on account of the mildness of the greater
part of the winter,” she subjoined.
“Allow me!” said the other, looping back the curtain she had until now
held in her hand. “Whereas our systems are braced by a more uniform
temperature to endure the severity of our frosts, and high, keen
blasts.”
“I suppose so,” assented Mabel, mechanically, and unconscious as himself
that meaning glances were stolen at them from the fireside circle, while
the hum and conversation was continuous and louder, for the good-natured
intent on the speakers' part to afford the supposed lovers the chance of
carrying on their dialogue unheard.
“But our houses are very comfortable--often very beautiful,” Mr.
Dorrance persevered, keeping to the scent of his game, as a trained
pointer scours a stubble-field, narrowing his beat at every circuit;
“and the hearts of those who live in them are warm and constant. It is
not always true that
“'The cold in clime are cold in blood;
Their love can scarce deserve the name.
“I have thought sometimes that that feeling is strongest and most
enduring, the demonstration of which is guarded and infrequent, as the
deepest portion of the channel is the most quiet.”
If his philosophical and scientific talk were heavy and solid, his
poetry and metaphors were ponderous and labored. Yet Mabel listened to
him now, neither facing nor avoiding him, looking down at her hands,
laid, one above the other, upon the window-sill, the image of maidenly
and courteous attention.
Why should she affect diffidence, or seek to escape what she had
foreseen for weeks, and made no effort to ward off? She had come to the
conclusion in October that Herbert Dorrance would, when the forms he
considered indispensable to regular courtship had been gone through
with, ask her to marry him, and coolly taken her resolution to accept
him. This morning, on the reception of a handsome Christmas gift from
him, and discovering in his actions something more pointed than his
customary punctilious devoirs, and in his didacticism the outermost of
the closing circle of pursuit she had furthermore concluded that his
happy thought was to celebrate the festal season by his betrothment. She
was quite ready for the declaration, which, she anticipated, would be
pompous and formal. She would have excused him from “doing” the poetical
part of it; but, since it was on the programme, it was not her province
to interfere.
“I am no enthusiast,” he next averred,--Rosa would have said, very
unnecessarily--“the tricks of sighing lovers are beyond--or beneath--my
imitation. I could not 'write a sonnet to my mistress' eyebrow,' or
move her to tearful pity by sounding declarations of my adoration of
her peerless charms, and my anguish at the bare imagination of the
possibility that these would ever be another's. But, so far as the
earnest affection and sincere esteem of an honest man can satisfy the
requirements of a good woman's heart, yours shall be filled, Mabel,
if you will be my wife. I have admired you from the first day of our
meeting. For six months I have been truly attached to you, and seriously
meditated this declaration. Your brother is satisfied with the exhibit I
have made of my affairs and my prospects, and sanctions my addresses.
I can maintain you more than comfortably, and it shall be one of the
principal aims of my life to consult your welfare in all my plans for my
own advancement. I have been settled in the large and flourishing
city of Albany about seven years, and--ignoring the trammels of mock
humility, let me say to you--have, within that period, gained to a
flattering extent the confidence of the most respectable portion of the
community; have built up an excellent and growing business connection,
and secured the entree of the best society there. These are the
pecuniary and social aspects of the alliance I propose for your
consideration. Through my sister, and by means of the intimate
association into which her marriage with your brother has drawn you and
myself, you have been enabled, within the twelvemonth that has elapsed
since our introduction, one to the other, to learn whatever you wished
to know with respect to my personal character, my tastes, temper, and
habits. It has given me heartfelt pleasure to discover that these
are, in the main, analogous to your own. I have built upon this
similarity--or harmony would be the better word--sanguine hopes of our
future happiness, should you see your way clear to accept my proffered
hand, consent to link your future with mine.”
“I beg to lay the 'ouse in Walcot Square, the business and myself,
before Miss Summerson, for her acceptance,” said magnanimous Mr. Guppy,
thus clinching his declaration that “the image he had supposed was
eradicated from his 'art was NOT eradicated.”
It was more in keeping with Rosa's character than Mabel's to recollect
the comic scene in the book they had read together lately, but the
latter did remember it at this instant, and despite the momentous issues
involved in her immediate action, was strongly tempted to laugh in her
wooer's solemn face.
Then--so abrupt and fearful are the transitions from the extremes of one
emotion to another--arose before her another picture. As in a
dissolving view, she beheld herself walking with Frederic Chilton in
the moonlighted alleys of the garden; midsummer flowers blooming to the
right and left, her head drooping, in shy happiness, as the lily-bell
bows to shed its freight of dew; his face glowing with the ardor
of verbal confession of that he had already sought to express by
letter--heard his fervent, pleading murmur, “Mabel! look up, my darling!
and tell me again that you will not send me away beggared and starving.
I cannot yet believe in the reality of my bliss!”
These were the love-words of an “enthusiast”--these---
The vision vanished at the short, hard breath, she drew in unclasping
her locked hands, and lifting her grave, tranquil eyes to the level of
her suitor's.
“I will follow your example in repudiating spurious sentiment, Mr.
Dorrance. I believe you to be a good, true man and that the attachment
you profess for me is sincere. I believe, moreover, that my chances of
securing real peace of mind will be fairer, should I commit myself to
your guardianship, than if I were to surrender my affections to the
keeping of one whose vows were more impassioned, who, professing to
adore me as a divinity, should yet be destitute of your high moral
principle and stainless honor. When I was younger and more rash in
judgment and feeling, I was led into a sad mistake by the evidence of
eye, ear, and a girl's imagination. I ought to tell you this, if you
have not already heard the story. I will not deceive you into the
persuasion that I can ever feel for you, or any other man, the love,
or what I thought was love, I knew in the few brief weeks of my early
betrothal. But you must know how that ended, and I have no desire to
repeat the mad experiment of risking my earthly all upon one throw of
fate. If friendship--if esteem, and the resolve to show myself a worthy
recipient of your generous confidence--will content you, all else shall
be as you wish.”
In her determination to be candid, to leave him in no uncertainty as to
her actual sentiments, she had concerted a response but a degree less
stilted than his proposal. She would have been ashamed of it had he
appeared less gratified.
His dull eyes brightened; his face flushed and beamed with unfeigned
delight, and in his transport he said the most natural and graceful
thing that ever escaped him during his wooing.
“I am content! The second love of Mabel Aylett must ever be more to me
than the first of any other woman!”
True, he nearly spoiled all the next minute, by producing from his
pocket a wee velvet case, from which he extracted a valuable diamond
ring, and proceeded, then and there, in the shadow of the accommodating
curtain, to fit it upon her finger. He had foreseen that she would not
be hardly won, and with characteristic providence had prepared himself
for the event.
The blood leaped to Mabel's temples and the fire to her eye, at the
prompt seal set by the practical non-enthusiast upon the contract, but
she bit her lip, and submitted after a second of thought. He owed his
exemption from rebuke to her memory of his latest utterance. She could
not mistake the tone of genuine feeling, and she overlooked the breach
of taste that followed; treasured up the heart-saying as one of the few
souvenirs she cared to preserve of his courtship.
“If he is content, I need not be miserable,” was the consolatory
reflection with which she took upon herself her new and binding
obligations.