"Fie! I don't believe it. That's unkind."
"You said you wished me to invent a reason. If I really had one, I don't
remember it."
"You told me you remembered the occasion in question perfectly."
"I meant the circumstances. I remember what we had for tea; I remember
what dress I wore. But I don't remember my feelings. They were naturally
not very memorable."
"What did you say, when your father proposed my coming?"
"I asked how much you would be willing to pay?"
"And then?"
"And then, if you looked 'respectable'."
"And then?"
"That was all. I told father to do as he pleased."
She continued to play. Leaning back in my chair, I continued to look at
her. There was a considerable pause.
"Miss Esther," said I, at last.
"Yes."
"Excuse me for interrupting you so often. But,"--and I got up and went
to the piano,--"but I thank Heaven that it has brought you and me
together."
She looked up at me and bowed her head with a little smile, as her hands
still wandered over the keys.
"Heaven has certainly been very good to us," said she.
"How much longer are you going to play?" I asked.
"I'm sure I don't know. As long as you like."
"If you want to do as I like, you will stop immediately."
She let her hands rest on the keys a moment, and gave me a rapid,
questioning look. Whether she found a sufficient answer in my face I
know not; but she slowly rose, and, with a very pretty affectation of
obedience, began to close the instrument. I helped her to do so.
"Perhaps you would like to be quite alone," she said. "I suppose your
own room is too cold."
"Yes," I answered, "you've hit it exactly. I wish to be alone. I wish to
monopolize this cheerful blaze. Hadn't you better go into the kitchen
and sit with the cook? It takes you women to make such cruel speeches."
"When we women are cruel, Mr. Locksley, it is without knowing it. We are
not wilfully so. When we learn that we have been unkind, we very humbly
ask pardon, without even knowing what our crime has been." And she made
me a very low curtsy.
"I will tell you what your crime has been," said I. "Come and sit by the
fire. It's rather a long story."
"A long story? Then let me get my work."
"Confound your work! Excuse me, but I mean it. I want you to listen to
me. Believe me, you will need all your thoughts."
She looked at me steadily a moment, and I returned her glance. During
that moment I was reflecting whether I might silently emphasize my
request by laying a lover's hand upon her shoulder. I decided that I
might not. She walked over and quietly seated herself in a low chair by
the fire. Here she patiently folded her arms. I sat down before her.
"With you, Miss Blunt," said I, "one must be very explicit. You are not
in the habit of taking things for granted. You have a great deal of
imagination, but you rarely exercise it on the behalf of other people."
I stopped a moment.
"Is that my crime?" asked my companion.
"It's not so much a crime as a vice," said I; "and perhaps not so much a
vice as a virtue. Your crime is, that you are so stone-cold to a poor
devil who loves you."
She burst into a rather shrill laugh. I wonder whether she thought I
meant Johnson.
"Who are you speaking for, Mr. Locksley?" she asked.
"Are there so many? For myself."
"Honestly?"
"Honestly doesn't begin to express it."
"What is that French phrase that you are forever using? I think I may
say, '_Allons, donc!_'"
"Let us speak plain English, Miss Blunt."
"'Stone-cold' is certainly very plain English. I don't see the relative
importance of the two branches of your proposition. Which is the
principal, and which the subordinate clause,--that I am stone-cold, as
you call it, or that you love me, as you call it?"
"As I call it? What would you have me call it? For God's sake, Miss
Blunt, be serious, or I shall call it something else. Yes, I love you.
Don't you believe it?"
"I am open to conviction."
"Thank God!" said I.
And I attempted to take her hand.
"No, no, Mr. Locksley," said she,--"not just yet, if you please."
"Action speaks louder than words," said I.
"There is no need of speaking loud. I hear you perfectly."
"I certainly sha'n't whisper," said I; "although it is the custom, I
believe, for lovers to do so. Will you be my wife?"
"I sha'n't whisper, either, Mr. Locksley. Yes, I will."
And now she put out her hand.--That's my fact.
* * * * *
_September 12th._--We are to be married within three weeks.
* * * * *
_September 19th._--I have been in New York a week, transacting business.
I got back yesterday. I find every one here talking about our
engagement. Esther tells me that it was talked about a month ago, and
that there is a very general feeling of disappointment that I am not
rich.
"Really, if you don't mind it," said I, "I don't see why others should."
"I don't know whether you are rich or not," says Esther; "but I know
that I am."
"Indeed! I was not aware that you had a private fortune," etc., etc.
This little farce is repeated in some shape every day. I am very idle. I
smoke a great deal, and lounge about all day, with my hands in my
pockets. I am free from that ineffable weariness of ceaseless _giving_
which I experienced six months ago. I was shorn of my hereditary
trinkets at that period; and I have resolved that _this_ engagement, at
all events, shall have no connection with the shops. I was balked of my
poetry once; I sha'n't be a second time. I don't think there is much
danger of this. Esther deals it out with full hands. She takes a very
pretty interest in her simple outfit,--showing me triumphantly certain
of her purchases, and making a great mystery about others, which she is
pleased to denominate tablecloths and napkins. Last evening I found her
sewing buttons on a tablecloth. I had heard a great deal of a certain
gray silk dress; and this morning, accordingly, she marched up to me,
arrayed in this garment. It is trimmed with velvet, and hath flounces, a
train, and all the modern improvements generally.
"There is only one objection to it," said Esther, parading before the
glass in my painting-room: "I am afraid it is above our station."
"By Jove! I'll paint your portrait in it," said I, "and make our
fortune. All the other men who have handsome wives will bring them to be
painted."
"You mean all the women who have handsome dresses," said Esther, with
great humility.
Our wedding is fixed for next Thursday. I tell Esther that it will be as
little of a wedding, and as much of a marriage, as possible. Her father
and her good friend the schoolmistress alone are to be present.--My
secret oppresses me considerably; but I have resolved to keep it for the
honeymoon, when it may take care of itself. I am harassed with a dismal
apprehension, that, if Esther were to discover it now, the whole thing
would be _à refaire_. I have taken rooms at a romantic little
watering-place called Clifton, ten miles off. The hotel is already quite
free of city-people, and we shall be almost alone.
* * * * *
_September 28th._--We have been here two days. The little transaction in
the church went off smoothly. I am truly sorry for the Captain. We drove
directly over here, and reached the place at dusk. It was a raw, black
day. We have a couple of good rooms, close to the savage sea. I am
nevertheless afraid I have made a mistake. It would perhaps have been
wiser to go inland. These things are not immaterial: we make our own
heaven, but we scarcely make our own earth. I am writing at a little
table by the window, looking out on the rocks, the gathering dusk, and
the rising fog. My wife has wandered down to the rocky platform in front
of the house. I can see her from here, bareheaded, in that old crimson
shawl, talking to one of the landlord's little boys. She has just given
the little fellow a kiss, bless her heart! I remember her telling me
once that she was very fond of little boys; and, indeed, I have noticed
that they are seldom too dirty for her to take on her knee. I have been
reading over these pages for the first time in--I don't know when. They
are filled with _her_,--even more in thought than in word. I believe I
will show them to her, when she comes in, I will give her the book to
read, and sit by her, watching her face,--watching the great secret dawn
upon her.
* * * * *
_Later._--Somehow or other, I can write this quietly enough; but I
hardly think I shall ever, write any more. When Esther came in, I handed
her this book.
"I want you to read it," said I.
She turned very pale, and laid it on the table, shaking her head.
"I know it," she said.
"What do you know?"
"That you have a hundred thousand a year. But believe me, Mr. Locksley,
I am none the worse for the knowledge. You intimated in one place in
your book that I am born for wealth and splendor. I believe I am. You
pretend to hate your money; but you would not have had me without it. If
you really love me,--and I think you do,--you will not let this make any
difference. I am not such a fool as to attempt to talk here about my
sensations. But I remember what I said."
"What do you expect me to do?" I asked. "Shall I call you some horrible
name and cast you off?"
"I expect you to show the same courage that I am showing. I never said I
loved you. I never deceived you in that. I said I would be your wife. So
I will, faithfully. I haven't so much heart as you think; and yet, too,
I have a great deal more. I am incapable of more than one
deception.--Mercy! didn't you see it? didn't you know it? see that I saw
it? know that I knew it? It was diamond cut diamond. You deceived me; I
deceived you. Now that your deception ceases, mine ceases. _Now_ we are
free, with our hundred thousand a year! Excuse me, but it sometimes
comes across me! _Now_ we can be good and honest and true. It was all a
make-believe virtue before."
"So you read that thing?" I asked: actually--strange as it may seem--for
something to say.
"Yes, while you were ill. It was lying with your pen in it, on the
table. I read it because I suspected. Otherwise I shouldn't have done
so."
"It was the act of a false woman," said I.
"A false woman? No,--simply of a woman. I am a woman, Sir." And she
began to smile. "Come, _you_ be a man!"
RIVIERA DI PONENTE.
1.
On this lovely Western Shore, where no tempests rage and roar,
Over olive-bearing mountains, by the deep and violet sea,
There, through each long happy day, winding slowly on our way,
Travellers from across the ocean, toward Italia journeyed we,--
Each long day, that, richer, fairer,
Showed the charming Riviera.
2.
There black war-ships doze at anchor, in the Bay of Villa-Franca;
Eagle-like, gray Esa, clinging to its rocky perch, looks down;
And upon the mountain dim, ruined, shattered, stern, and grim,
Turbia sees us through the ages with its austere Roman frown,--
While we climb, where cooler, rarer
Breezes sweep the Riviera.
3.
Down the hillside steep and stony, through the old streets of Mentone,
Quiet, half-forgotten city of a drowsy prince and time,
Through the mild Italian midnight, rolls upon the wave the moonlight,
Murmuring in our dreams the cadence of a strange Ligurian rhyme,--
Rhymes in which each heart is sharer,
Journeying on the Riviera.
4.
When the morning air comes purer, creeping up in our vettura,
Eastward gleams a rosy tumult with the rising of the day;
Toward the north, with gradual changes, steal along the mountain-ranges
Tender tints of warmer feeling, kissing all their peaks of gray;
And far south the waters wear a
Smile along the Riviera.
5.
Helmed with snow, the Alpine giants at invaders look defiance,
Gazing over nearer summits, with a fixed, mysterious stare,
Down along the shaded ocean, on whose edge in tremulous motion
Floats an island, half-transparent, woven out of sea and air;--
For such visions, shaped of air, are
Frequent on our Riviera.
6.
He whose mighty earthquake-tread all Europa shook with dread,
Chief whose infancy was cradled in that old Tyrrhenic isle,
Joins the shades of trampling legions, bringing from remotest regions
Gallic fire and Roman valor, Cimbric daring, Moorish guile,
Guests from every age to share a
Portion of this Riviera.
7.
Then the Afric brain, whose story fills the centuries with its glory,
Moulding Gaul and Carthaginian into one all-conquering band,
With his tuskèd monsters grumbling, 'mid the alien snow-drifts
stumbling,
Then, an avalanche of ruin, thundering from that frozen land
Into vales their sons declare are
Sunny as our Riviera.
8.
Tired of these, the mighty mother sought among her types another
Stamp of blended saint and hero, only once on earth before,--
In the luminous aureole shining from a maiden's soul
Through four hundred sluggish years; till again on Nizza's shore
Comes the hero of Caprera
Born upon our Riviera.
9.
Thus forever, in our musing, comes man's spirit interfusing
Thought of poet and of hero with the landscape and the sky;
And this shore, no longer lonely, lives the life of romance only:
Gauls and Moors and Northern Sea-Kings, all are gliding,
ghost-like, by.
So with Nature man is sharer
Even on the Riviera.
10.
Feeble voice! no longer stammer words which shame the panorama
Seen from all the mountain-passes of this old Aurelian Way,
With the shore below us sleeping, and the distant steamer creeping
From Marseilles to proud Genova, on to Spezzia's famous bay.
So forever, _mia cara_,
Shall we love this Riviera.
DOCTOR JOHNS.
XLVI.
It would have been strange, if Adèle had not some day formed her ideal
of a lover. What young girl, indeed, does not? Who cannot recall the
sweet illusions of those tripping youthful years, when, for the first
time, Sir William Wallace strode so gallantly with waving plume and
glittering falchion down the pages of Miss Porter,--when sweet Helen Mar
wasted herself in love for the hero,--when the sun-browned Ivanhoe
dashed so grandly into that famous tilting-ground near to
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and brought the wicked Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert to
a reckoning,--when we wished the disinherited knight better things than
the cold love of the passionless Rowena, and sighed over the fate of
poor Fergus MacIvor? With all these characters, and many other such,
Adèle had made acquaintance, in company with her dear Rose; and by the
light of them, they had fashioned such ideals in their little heads as
do not often appear in the flesh. Not that the two friends always agreed
in their dreamy fancies; but for either, a hero must have been handsome
and brave and true and kind and sagacious and learned. If only a few
hundred of men should be patterned after the design of a young girl of
sixteen or eighteen, what an absurd figure we old sinners should cut in
the comparison! Yet it is pleasant to reflect that thousands of fresh
young hearts do go on, year after year, conceiving of wonderful
excellences as pertaining to the baser sex; and the knowledge of the
fact should, it would seem, give a little more of animation to our
struggles against the deviltries and brutalities of the world.
But the ideal of our friend Adèle had not been constant. Three years
back, the open, frank, brave front which Phil Elderkin wore had almost
reached it; and when Rose had said,--as she was wont to say, in her
sisterly pride,--"He's a noble fellow," there had been a little tingling
of the heart in Adèle, which seemed to echo the words. Afterward had
come that little glimpse of the world which her journey and intercourse
with Maverick had afforded; and the country awkwardness of the Elderkins
had somehow worked an eclipse of his virtues. Reuben, indeed, had
comeliness, and had caught at that time some of the graces of the city;
but Reuben was a _tease_, and failed in a certain quality of respect for
her, (at least, she fancied it,) in default of which she met all his
favors with a sisterly tenderness, in which there was none of the
reserve that tempts passion to declare itself.
Later, when Reuben so opened the way to her belief, and associated
himself so intimately with the culmination of her religious faith, he
seemed to her for a time the very impersonation of her girlish
fancy,--so tender, so true, so trustful. Her religious enthusiasm
blended with and warmed her sentiment; and never had she known such
hours of calm enjoyment, or such hopeful forecast of her worldly future,
as in those golden days when the hearts of both were glowing (or seemed
to be) with a common love. It was not that this sentiment in her took
any open form of expression; her instinctive delicacy so kept it under
control that she was but half conscious of its existence. But it was
none the less true that the sad young pilgrim, who had been a brother,
and who had unlocked for her the Beautiful Gate, wore a new aspect. Her
heart was full of those glittering estimates of life, which come at rare
intervals, in which duties and affections all seem in delightful accord,
working each their task, and glowing through all the reach of years,
until the glow is absorbed in the greater light which shines upon
Christian graves. But Reuben's desertion from the faith broke this
phantasm. Her faith, standing higher, never shook; but the sentiment
which grew under its cover found nothing positive whereby to cling, and
perished with the shock. Besides which, her father's injunction came to
the support of her religious convictions, and made her disposition to
shake off that empty fancy tenfold strong. Had Reuben, in those days of
his exaltation, made declaration of his attachment, it would have met
with a response that could have admitted of no withdrawal, and her heart
would have been leashed to his, whatever outlawry might threaten him.
She thanked Heaven that it had not been thus. Her ideal was still
unstained and unbroken; but it no longer found its type in the
backsliding Reuben. It is doubtful, indeed, if her sentiment at this
period, by mere force of rebound, and encouraged by her native charities
and old proclivities, did not rally about young Elderkin, who had
equipped himself with many accomplishments of the world, and who, if he
made no pretensions to the faith she had embraced, manifested an
habitual respect that challenged her gratitude.
As for Reuben, after his enthusiasm of the summer had vanished, he felt
a prodigious mortification in reflecting that Adèle had been so closely
the witness of his short-lived hallucination. It humiliated him bitterly
to think that all his religious zeal had proved in her regard but the
empty crackling of a fire of thorns. No matter what may be a youth's
sentiment for girlhood, he never likes it to be witness of anything
disparaging to his sturdy resolution and manly purpose. But Adèle had
seen him shake like a reed under the deepest emotions that could give
tone to character; and in his mortification at the thought, he
transferred to her a share of the resentment he felt against himself. It
was a relief to treat her with a dignified coolness, and to meet all her
tender inquiries, which she did not forbear, with an icy assurance of
manner that was more than half affected,--yet not unkind, but
assiduously and intensely and provokingly civil.
Seeing this, the Doctor and Miss Eliza had given over any fear of a
possibly dangerous interest on the part of Reuben; and yet keen
observers might well have scented a danger in this very studied
indifference, if they reflected that its motive lay exclusively in a
mortified pride. We are not careful to conceal our mortifications from
those whose regard we rate humbly.
At any rate, it happened, that, with the coming of the autumn months,
Reuben, still floating drearily on a sea of religious speculation, and
veering more and more into open mockery of the beliefs of all about him,
grew weary of his affectations with respect to Adèle. He fretted under
the kindly manner with which she met his august civilities. They did not
wound her sensibilities, as he hoped they might have done. Either this
disappointment or the need of relief provoked a change of tactics. With
a sudden zeal that was half earnest and half a freak of vanity, he
devoted himself to Adèle. The father's sympathy with him was just now
dead; that of the aunt had never been kindled to such a degree as to
meet his craving; with the Elderkins he was reluctant to unfold his
opinions so far as to demand sympathy. As for Adèle, if he could light
up again the sentiment which he once saw beaming in her face, he could
at least find in it a charming beguilement of his unrest. She had a
passion for flowers: every day he gathered for her some floral gift;
every day she thanked him with a kindness that meant only kindness. She
had a passion for poetry: every day he read to her such as he knew she
must admire; every day she thanked him with a warmth upon which he could
build no hopes.
Both the Doctor and Miss Eliza were disturbed by this new zeal of his.
At the instance of the spinster, the Doctor undertook to lay before
Reuben the information conveyed in the letter of Maverick, and that
gentleman's disapproval of any association between the young people
looking to marriage. It was not an easy or an agreeable task for the
Doctor; and he went about it in a very halting manner.
"Your Aunt Eliza has observed, Reuben, that you have lately become more
pointed in your attentions to Adaly."
"I dare say, father; worries her, doesn't it?"
"We do not know how far these attentions may be serious, Reuben."
"Nor I, father."
The Doctor was shocked at this new evidence of his son's indifference to
any fixed rule of conduct.
"How long is it, father," continued Reuben, "since Aunt Eliza has
commenced her plottings against Adèle?"
"Not plottings against her, I trust, Reuben."
"Yes, she has, father. She's badgering her in her quiet way
incessantly,--as far back as when she caught sight of her in that dance
at the Elderkins'. For my part, I think it was a charming thing to see."
"We have graver reasons for our anxiety in regard to your relations with
her, my son; and not the least of them is Mr. Maverick's entire
disapproval of any such attachment."
And thereupon the Doctor had proceeded to lay before Reuben (who now
showed a most lively interest) a full revelation of the facts announced
in Maverick's letter.
The son had a strong smack of the father's family pride, and the strange
news was bewildering to him; but in his present stage of distrust, he
felt a strong disposition to protest against all the respectable
conventionalities that hedged him in. A generous instinct in him, too,
as he thought of the poor girl under the ban of the townsfolk, craved
some chivalric expression; and whatever sentiment he may really have
entertained for her in past days took new force in view of the sudden
barriers that rose between him and the tender, graceful, confiding,
charming Adèle, whose image had so long and (as he now thought) so
constantly dwelt in the dreamy mirage of his future. Under the spur of
these feelings, he presently gave over his excited walk up and down the
study, and, coming close to the Doctor, whispered, with a grave
earnestness that made the old gentleman recognize a man in his boy,--
"Father, I have doubted my own feelings about Adèle: now I do not. I
love her; I love her madly. I shall protect her; if she will marry me,"
(and he touched the Doctor on the shoulder with a quick, nervous tap of
his hand,) "I shall marry her,--God bless her!"
And Reuben, by the very speech, as well as by the thoughts that had gone
before, had worked himself into a passion of devotion.
"Be careful, my son," said the old gentleman; "remember how your
enthusiasm has betrayed you in a still more serious matter."
Reuben smiled bitterly.
"Don't reproach me with that, father. It seems to me that I am acting
now more on the side of the Christian charities than either you or Aunt
Eliza."
And with this he strode out, leaving the Doctor in an agony of
apprehension.
A moment after, Miss Eliza, who was ever on the alert, and without whose
knowledge a swallow could not dart into the chimneys of the parsonage,
came rustling into the study.
"Well, Benjamin, what does Reuben say?"
"Given over to his idols, Eliza,--given over to his idols. We can only
pray God to have him in His holy keeping."
It would be impossible to fathom all the emotions of Reuben during that
interview with his father. It would be wrong to say that the view of
future marriage had not often held up its brilliant illusions before
him; it would be wrong to say that they had never been associated with
the charming vivacity of Adèle, as well as, at other times, with the
sweet graces of Rose Elderkin. But these illusions had been of a
character so transitory, so fleeting, that he had come to love their
brilliant changes, and to look forward with some dread to the possible
permanence of them, or such fixedness as should take away the charming
drift of his vagaries. If, in some wanton and quite impossible moment,
the modest Rose had conquered her delicacy so far as to put her hand in
his, and say, "Will you be my husband?" he would not have been so much
outraged by her boldness as disturbed by the reflection that a pleasant
little dream of love was broken up, and that his thought must come to
that practical solution of a _yes_ or _no_ which would make an end of
his delightful doubts and yearnings. The positive and the known are,
after all, so much less, under imaginative measure, than the uncertain
and the dreamy!
And if he could have taken the spinster's old tales of Adèle's regard
for him and devotion to him at their highest truth, (which he never did,
because of the girl's provoking familiarity and indifference,) he would
have felt a great charm in his life cut off. Yet now he wanders in
search of her with his heart upon his lip and a great fire in his brain.
Not a little pride in affronting opinion may have kindled the glow of
his sudden resolve. There was an audacity in it that tempted and regaled
him. Why should he, whose beliefs were so uncertain, who had grown into
doubts of that faith on which all the conventional proprieties about him
reposed,--why should he not discard them, and obey a single, strong,
generous instinct? When a man's religious sensibilities suffer recoil as
Reuben's had done, there grows up a new pride in the natural emotions of
generosity; the humane instincts show exceptional force; the skeptics
become the teachers of an exaggerated philanthropy.
Did he love her beyond all others? Yesterday he could not have told;
to-day, under the fervor of his audacity and of his pride, his love
blazes in a fiery flame. It seethes around the memory of her lithe,
graceful figure in a whirl of passion. Those ripe red lips shall taste
the burning heat of his love and tenderness. He will guard, cherish,
protect, and the iron aunt may protest, or the world talk as it will.
"Adèle!" "Adèle!" His heart is full of the utterance, and his step wild
with tumultuous feeling, as he rushes away to find her,--to win her,--to
bind together their destinies forever!
XLVII.
It was a mellow evening of later October. Mists hung in all the hollows
of the hills. Within the orchard, where Adèle was strolling, a few
golden apples still shone among the bronzed leaves. She saw Reuben
coming swiftly through the garden; but his eager step faltered as he
came near her. Even the serene look of girlhood has a power in it to
make impassioned confidence waver, and enthusiasms suffer recoil. He
meets her at last with an assumption of his every-day manner, which she
cannot but see presently is underlaid with a tempest of struggling
feeling to which he is a stranger. He has taken her hand and placed it
in his arm,--a little coquettish device to which he was wont; but he
keeps the little hand in his with a nervous clasp that is new, and that
makes her tremble all the more when his speech grows impassioned, and
the easy compliments of his past days of frolicsome humor take a depth
of tone which make her heart thrill strangely. Meantime, they had come
to the garden-end of the walk.
"It's late, Reuben, and I must go indoors," said she, with a quiet that
she did not feel.
"We'll take one more turn, Adèle; you _must_." And her hand trembled in
the eager clasp he fastened upon it.
Not once did it come into her mind that Reuben was to make a declaration
of passion for her. She had feared only some burst of feeling in the
direction of the spinster, or of the Doctor, which should compromise him
even more seriously. When, therefore, he burst forth, as he did
presently, with a passionate avowal of his love, she was overwhelmed
with confusion.
"This is so sudden, so strange, Reuben! indeed it is!"
Tenderly as she may have felt toward him in days gone, and gratefully as
she always felt, this sudden attempt to carry by storm the very citadel
of her affections was not alone a surprise, but seemed like sacrilege.
The mystery and doubt that overhung the relations between her own father
and mother--and which she felt keenly--had made her regard with awe any
possible marriage of her own, investing the thought of it with a
terrible sanctity, and as something to be approached only with a
reverent fear. If in this connection she had ever thought of Reuben, it
was in those days when he seemed so earnest in the faith, and when their
feelings were blent by some superhuman agency. But at his divergence
into the paths of skepticism, it seemed to her simple and intense faith
that thenceforth their pilgrimages must be wholly distinct: his--and she
trembled at the thought of it--through some terrible maze of error,
where she could not follow: and hers--by God's grace--straight to the
city whose gates are of pearl.
When, therefore, she had replied to the passionate address of Reuben,
"You must not talk thus," it was with a tear in her eye.
"It grieves you, then, Adèle?"
"Yes, it grieves me, Reuben. Our paths are different now"; and she
bethought herself of her father's injunction, which seemed to make her
duty still plainer, and forbade her to encourage that parley with her
heart which--with her hand still fast in Reuben's, and his eyes beaming
with a fierce heat upon her--she was beginning to entertain.
"Adèle, tell me, can I go on?"
"Indeed, indeed, you must not, Reuben!"--and withdrawing her hand
suddenly, she passed it over brow and eyes, as if to rally her thoughts
to measure the situation.
"You are weeping, Adèle?" said Reuben.
"No, not weeping," said she, dashing the merest film of mist from her
eyes, "but so troubled!--so troubled!" And she looked yearningly, but
vainly, in his face for that illumination which had belonged to his
enthusiasm of the summer.
They walked for a moment in silence,--he, with a scowl upon his face.
Seeing this, Adèle said plaintively,--
"It seems to me, Reuben, as if this might be only a solemn mockery of
yours."
"You doubt me, then?" returned he like a flash.
"Do you not doubt yourself, Reuben? Have you never doubted yourself?"
This with a glance that pierced him through.
"Good Heavens! are you turned preacher?" said he, bitterly. "Will you
measure a heart by its dogmatic beliefs?"
"For shame, Reuben!"
And for a time both were silent. At last Adèle spoke again,--
"There is a sense of coming trouble that oppresses me strangely,--that
tells me I must not listen to you, Reuben."
"I know it, Adèle; and it is for this I would cherish you, and protect
you against all possible shame or indignities"----
"Shame! Indignities! What does this mean? What do you know, Reuben?"
Reuben blushed scarlet. His speech had outrun his discretion; but
seizing her hand, and pressing it more tenderly than ever, he said,--
"Only this, Adèle: I see that a coolness has grown up toward you in the
parsonage; the old prejudice against French blood may revive again;
besides which, there is, you know, Adèle, that little family cloud"----
"Is this the old, kind Reuben, my brother, who reminds me of a trouble
so shadowy I cannot fairly measure it?" And Adèle covered her face with
her hands.
"Forgive me, Adèle, for God's sake!"
"There _is_ a cloud, Reuben; thank you for the word," said Adèle,
recovering herself; "and there is, I fear, an even darker cloud upon
your faith. Until both are passed, I can never listen to such talk as
you would urge upon me,--never! never!"
And there was a spirit in her words now that awed Reuben.
"Would you impute my unbelief to me as a crime, Adèle? Is this your
Christian charity? Do you think that I enjoy this fierce wrestling with
doubts? or, having them, would you bid me play false and conceal them?
What if I am a final castaway, as your good books tell us some must be,
would you make me a castaway before my time, and balk all my hopes in
life? Is this your charity?"
"I would not,--you know I would not, Reuben."
"Listen to me, Adèle. If there be any hope of making my way out of this
weary wrangle, it seems to me that it would be in the constant presence
of your simple, exultant faith. Will you be my teacher, Adèle?"
"Teacher,--yes, with all my heart, Reuben."
"Then be mine," said he, seizing her hand again, "from this very hour!"
An instant she seemed to waver; then came over her the memory of her
father's injunction,--the mystery, too, that overshadowed her own life.
"I cannot,--I cannot, Reuben!"
"Is this final?" said he, calmly.
"Final."
She sighed it rather than spoke aloud; the next instant she had slipped
away through the shrubbery, with a swift, cruel rustle of her silken
dress, toward the parsonage.
Reuben lingered in the orchard until he saw the light flashing through
the muslin hangings of her window. She had gone early to her chamber.
She had kissed the crucifix that was her mother's with a fervor that
sprang as much from devotion as from sentiment. She had sobbed out her
prayer, and with sobs had buried her sweet face in the pillow.
Could Reuben have seen or conceived all this, he might have acted
differently.
As it was, he entered the Doctor's study an hour later, with the utmost
apparent coolness.
"Well, father," said he, "I have offered marriage to your motherless and
pious French _protégée_, and she declines."
"My poor son!" said the Doctor.
But his sympathy was not so much with any possible feeling of
disappointment as with the chilling heartlessness and unbelief that
seemed to boast themselves in his speech.
"It will be rather dull in Ashfield now, I fancy," continued Reuben,
"and I shall slip off to New York to-morrow and take a new taste of the
world."
And the Doctor (as if to himself) said despairingly, "'_Whom He will He
hardeneth._'"
"But father," said Reuben, (without notice of the old gentleman's
ejaculation,) "don't let Aunt Eliza know of this,--not a word, or she
will be fearfully cruel to the poor child."
There was a grave household in the parsonage next morning. Reuben
rebelled in heart, in face, and in action against the tediously long
prayer of the parson, though the old gentleman's spirit was writhing
painfully in his pleadings. The aunt was more pious and austere than
ever. Adèle, timid and shrinking, yet with a beautiful and a trustful
illumination in her eye, that for days, and weeks, and months, lingered
in the memory of the parson's son.
Later in the day Reuben went to make his adieus to the Elderkins. The
old Squire was seated in his door busied with the "Weekly Courant,"
which had just come in.
"Aha, Master Reuben," (this was his old-fashioned way,) "you're looking
for that lazy fellow, Phil, I suppose. You'll find him up-stairs with
his cigar and his Spanish, I'll venture."
Reuben made his way up to Phil's chamber after the unceremonious manner
to which he has been used in that hospitable home, while a snatch of a
little songlet from Rose came floating after him along the stairs. It
was very sweet. But what were sweet songlets to him now? It being a mild
autumn day, Phil sat at the open window, from which he had many a time
seen the old Doctor jogging past in his chaise, and sometimes the tall
Almira picking her maidenly way along the walk with her green parasol
daintily held aloft with thumb and two fingers, while from the lesser
fingers dangled a little embroidered bag which was the wonder of all the
school-girls. Other times, too, from this eyrie of his, he had seen
Adèle tripping past, with Reuben beside her, and had wondered what their
chat might be, while he had feasted his eyes upon her fair figure.
Yet Phil was by no means an idler; he had developed a great business
shrewdness, and two or three times in the week drove over to a
neighboring river-town to look after the shipments to the West Indies in
which he was now interested in company with the Squire. But this had not
forbidden a little cursory reading of a sentimental kind. There may have
been a stray volume of Pelham upon his table, and a six-volume set of
Byron in green and gold upon his limited book-shelf, (both of which were
strongly disapproved of by Mrs. Elderkin, but tolerated by the
Squire,)--besides which, there were certain Spanish ballads to which he
had taken a great fancy since his late visit to Cuba.
Reuben was always a welcome visitor, and was presently in full flow of
talk, and puffing nervously at one of Phil's choice Havanas (which in
that day were true to their titles).
"I'm off, Phil," said Reuben at last, breaking in upon his host's
ecstasy over a ballad he had been reciting, with what he counted the
true Castilian magniloquence.
"Off where?" said Phil.
"Off for the city. I'm weary of this do-nothing life,--weary of the
town, weary of the good people."
"There's nothing you care for, then, in Ashfield?" said Phil. And at
that moment a little burst of the singing of Rose came floating up the
stair,--so sweet! so sweet!
"Care for? Yes," said Reuben, "but they are all so good! so devilish
good!"--and he puffed at his cigar with a nervous violence. It was not
often that such an approach to profanity sullied the lips of Reuben, and
Phil noted it with surprise.
"I thought there would have been at least one magnet that would have
kept you here," said Phil.
"What magnet, pray?" says Reuben,--somewhat calm again.
"There she goes," says Phil, looking out of the window. And at the
moment Adèle tripped by, with the old Doctor walking gravely at her
side.
"Humph!" said Reuben, with a composure that was feigned, "she's too much
of a Puritan for me, Phil: or rather, I'm too little of a Puritan for
her."
Philip looked at his companion keenly. And Reuben, looking back at him
as keenly, said, after a silence of a few moments,--
"I don't think you'll ever marry her either, Phil."
"Marry!" said Phil, with a deep, honest blush,--"who talks of that?"
"You, in your heart, Phil. Do you think I am blind? Do you think I have
not seen that you have loved her, Phil, ever since you knew what it was
to love a woman? Do you think, that, as a boy, you ever imposed upon me
with your talk about that handsome Suke Boody, the tavern-keeper's
daughter? Good Heavens! Phil, I think there were never two men in the
world who talked their thoughts plainly to each other! Do you think I do
not know that you have played the shy lover, because with your big heart
you have yielded to what you counted a prior claim of mine,--because
Adèle was one of us at the parsonage?"
"In such affairs," said Phil, with some constraint and not a little
wounded pride, "I don't think men are apt to recognize prior claims."
Reuben replied only by a faint sardonic smile.
"You're a good fellow, Phil, but you won't marry her."
"Of course, then, you know why," said Phil, with something very like a
sneer.
"Certainly," said Reuben. "Because you can't affront the world, because
you are bound by its conventionalities and respectabilities, as I am
not. I spurn them."
"Respectabilities!" said Phil, in amazement. "What does this mean? Just
now she was a Puritan."
"It means, Phil," (and here Reuben reflected a moment or two, puffing
with savage energy,) "it means what I can't wholly explain to you. You
know her French blood; you know all the prejudices against the faith in
which she was reared; you know she has an instinct and will of her own.
In short, Phil, I don't think you'll ever marry her; but if you can, you
may."
"_May!_" said Phil, whose pride was now touched to the quick. "And what
authority have you, pray?"
"The authority of one who has loved her," said Reuben, with a fierce,
quick tone, and dashing his half-burnt cigar from the window; "the
authority of one who, if he had chosen to perjure himself and profess a
faith which he could not entertain, and wear sanctimonious airs, might
have won her heart."
"I don't believe it!" said Phil, with a great burst of voice. "There's
no hypocrisy could win Adèle."
Reuben paced up and down the chamber, then came and took the hand of his
old friend:--
"Phil, you're a noble-hearted fellow. I never thought any one could
convict me of injustice to Adèle. You have done it. I hope you'll always
defend her; and whatever may betide, I hope your mother and Rose will
always befriend her. She may need it."
Again there was a little burst of song from below, and it lingered upon
the ear of Reuben long after he had left the Elderkin homestead.
The next day he was gone,--to try his new taste of the world.
XLVIII.
It was in no way possible for the simple-hearted Doctor to conceal from
the astute spinster the particular circumstances which had hurried
Reuben's departure, and the knowledge of them made her humiliation
complete. During all the latter months of Reuben's stay she had not
scrupled to drop occasional praises of him into the ear of Adèle, as in
the old times. It was in agreement with her rigid notions of
retribution, that this poor social outlaw should love vainly; and a
baffling disappointment would have seemed to the spinster's narrow mind
a highly proper and most logical result of the terrible ignominy which
overhung the unconscious victim. Indeed, the innocent unconsciousness of
anything derogatory to her name or character which belonged to Adèle,
and her consequent cheery mirthfulness, were sources of infinite
annoyance to Miss Eliza. She would have liked to see her in sackcloth
for a while, and to enjoy her own moral elevation by such a contrast.
Nor was this from sheer malice; in that sense she was not malicious; but
she deluded herself with the idea that this was a high religious view of
sin and its consequences,--a proper mortification to befall one on whom
Heaven's punishment (of the fathers through the children) must needs
descend. And like many another of her iron purpose, she would not have
shrunk from being herself the instrument of such punishment, and would
have gloated over its accomplishment,--as if by it the Devil's devices
had received rebuke, and the elect found cause for comfort. Many good
people--as the world goes--have this vulture appetite for preying upon
the very bowels of sinners; and there is no judge so implacable as one
who inflames his judicial zeal with the fiery heats of an exaggerated
religious pretension.
Think, then, of the situation of poor Adèle under the attentions of such
a woman, after she has ferreted out from the Doctor the truth with
respect to Reuben! It makes us tremble while we write of it. There is
often a kind of moral tyranny in households, which, without ever a loud
word, much less a blow, can pierce a sensitive mind as with fiery
needles. Of such a silent, fearful tyranny Adèle now felt the
innumerable stings, and under it her natural exuberance of spirits gave
way, her faith almost waned; it seemed to her that a kiss upon her
silent crucifix were better than a prayer shared with her tormentor.
The Doctor showed all his old, grave kindness; but he was sadly broken
by his anxieties with respect to his son; nor was he ever demonstrative
enough to supply the craving of Adèle's heart, under her present greed
for sympathy. Even the villagers looked upon her more coldly since the
sharpened speech of the spinster had dropped widely, but very quietly,
its damaging innuendoes, and since her well-calculated surmises, that
French blood was, after all, not to be wholly trusted. It was clear to
the townspeople that all was at an end between Adèle and Reuben,--clear
that she had fallen away from the old favor in which she once stood at
the parsonage; and Miss Eliza, by her adroit hints, and without any
palpable violation of truth, found means of associating these results
with certain suspicious circumstances which had come to light respecting
the poor girl's character,--circumstances for which she herself (Miss
Eliza was kind enough to say) was not altogether accountable, perhaps,
but yet sufficient to warrant a little reserve of confidence, and _of
course_ putting an end to any thought of intimate alliance with "the
Johns family." She even whispered in her most insidious manner into the
ear of old Mistress Tew,--who, being somewhat deaf, is the most
inveterate village gossip,--that "it was hard for the poor thing, when
Reuben left so suddenly."
Adèle writes in these times to her father, that he need put himself in
no fear in regard to marriage. "I have had an _éclaircissement_" (she
says) "with friend Reuben. His declaration of attachment (I think I may
tell _you_ this, dear papa) was so wholly unexpected that I could not
count it real. He seemed actuated by some sudden controlling sympathy
(as he often is) that I could not explain; and had it been otherwise,
your injunction, dear papa, and the fact that he has become a bitter
skeptic in regard to our most holy religion, would have made me pause.
He dropped a hint, too, of the mystery attaching to my family, (not
unkindly, for he is, after all, a dear, good-hearted fellow,) which
kindled not a little indignation in me; and I told him--with some of the
pride, I think, I must have inherited from you, papa--that, until that
mystery was cleared, I would marry neither him nor another. Was I not
right?
"I want so much to be with you again, dear papa,--to tell you all I hope
and fear,--to feel your kiss again! Miss Johns, whom I have tried hard
to love, but cannot, is changed wofully in her manner toward me. I feel
it is only my home now by sufferance,--not such a home as you would
choose for me, I am sure. The Doctor--good soul--is as kind as he knows
how to be, but I want--oh, how I want!--to leap into your arms, dear
papa, and find home there. Why can I not? I am sure--over and over
sure--that I could bring some sunlight into a home of yours, if you
would but let me. And when you come, as you say you mean to do soon, do
not put me off with such stories as you once told me, of 'a lean
Savoyard in red wig and spectacles, and of a fat Frenchman with bristly
moustache' (you see I remember all); tell me I may come to be the
mistress of your parlor and your _salon_, and I will keep all in such
order, that, I am sure, you will not want me to leave you again; and you
will love me so much that I shall never want to leave you.
"Indeed, indeed, it is very wearisome to me here. The village people
seem all of them to have caught the coolness of Miss Johns, and look
askance at me. Only the Elderkins show their old kindness, and it is
unfailing. Do not, I pray, disturb yourself about any 'lost fortune' of
which you wrote to the Doctor, but never--cruel papa!--a word to me. I
am rich: I can't tell you how many dollars are in the Savings Bank for
me,--and for you, if you wish them, I have so little occasion to spend
anything. But I have committed the extravagance of placing a beautiful
tablet over the grave of poor Madame Arles, and, much to the horror of
the good Doctor, insisted upon having a little cross inscribed upon its
front. You have never told me, dear papa, if you received the long
account I gave you of her sudden death, and how she died without ever
telling me anything of herself,--though I believe it was in her mind to
do so, at the last."
No, of a truth, such a letter had never been received by Maverick, and
he cursed the mails royally for it, since it might have prevented the
need of any such disclosure as he had made to his friend Johns. When the
present missive of Adèle came to him, he was entering the brilliant Café
de L'Orient at Marseilles, in company with his friend Papiol. The news
staggered him for a moment.
"Papiol!" said he, "_mon ami_, Julie is dead!"
"_Parbleu!_ And among your Puritans, yonder? She must have made a
piquant story of it all!"
"Not a word, Papiol! She has kept by her promise bravely."
"_Tant mieux_: it will give you good appetite, _mon ami_."
For a moment the better nature of Maverick had been roused, and he
turned a look of loathing upon the complacent Frenchman seated by him
(which fortunately the stolid Papiol did not comprehend). For a moment,
his thought ran back to a sunny hillside near to the old town of Arles,
where lines of stunted, tawny olives crept down the fields,--where
fig-trees showed their purple nodules of fruit,--where a bright-faced
young peasant-girl, with a gay kerchief turbaned about her head with a
coquettish tie, lay basking in the sunshine. He heard once more the trip
of her voice warbling a Provençal song, while the great ruin of the
Roman _arène_ came once more to his vision, with its tufting shrubs and
battered arches rising grim and gaunt into the soft Southern sky; the
church-bells of the town poured their sweet jangle on his ear again, the
murmur of distant voices came floating down the wind, and again the
pretty Provençal song fluttered on the balmy air; the coquettish turban
was in his eye, the plump, soft hand of the pretty Provençal girl in his
grasp, and her glossy locks touched his burning cheek. So much, at
least, that was Arcadian; and then (in his glowing memory still) the
loves, the jealousies, the delusions, the concealments, the
faithlessness, the desertion, the parting! And now,--now the chief
actress in this drama that had touched him so nearly lay buried in a New
England grave, with his own Adèle her solitary mourner!
"It was your friend the Doctor who gave the good woman absolution, I
suppose," said Papiol, tapping his snuff-box, and gathering a huge pinch
between thumb and finger.
"Not even that comfort, I suspect," said Maverick.
_"Bah! pauvre femme!"_
And the philosopher titillated his nostril until he sneezed again and
again.
"And the Doctor," continued Papiol,--"does he suspect nothing?"
"Nothing. He has counselled me to make what amends I may by
marrying--you know whom."
"_Pardieu!_ he is a good innocent, that old friend of yours!"
"Better than you or I, Papiol."
"_Cela va sans dire, mon ami._ And _la petite_,--the little
bright-eyes,--what of her?"
"She is unsuspicious, but hints at a little cloud that overshadows her
domestic history, and tells her lover that it shall be cleared up before
she will marry him, or any other."
"Ta, ta! It's an inquisitive sex, Maverick! I could never quite
understand how Julie should have learned that her little one was still
alive, and been able to trace her as she did. I think the death was set
forth in the Gazette,--eh, Maverick?"
"It certainly was," said Maverick,--"honestly, for the child's good."
"Ha!--honestly,--_bon_! I beg pardon, _mom ami_."
And Papiol took snuff again.
"Set forth in the Gazette, _en règle_, and came to Julie's knowledge,
as I am sure; and she sailed for the East with her brother, who was a
small trader in Smyrna, I believe,--poor woman! To tell truth, Papiol,
had she been alive, loving Adèle as I do, I believe I should have been
tempted to follow the parson's admonition, cost what it might."
"And then?"
"And then I should give _petite_ an honest name to bear,--honest as I
could, at least; and would have lavished wealth upon her, as I mean to
do; and made the last half of my life better than the first."
"Excellent! most excellent! considering that the lady is dead, _pauvre
femme_! And now, my dear fellow, you might go over to your country and
play the good Puritan by marrying Mees Eliza,--_hein_?"
And he called out obstreperously,--
"_Garçon!_"
"_Voici, Messieurs!_"
"_Absinthe,--deux verres._"
And he drummed with his fat fingers upon the edge of the marble slab.
"_Mon Dieu!_" said Maverick, with a sudden pallor on his face, "who is
she?"
The eyes of Papiol fastened upon the figure which had arrested the
attention of Maverick,--a lady of, may-be, forty years, fashionably, but
gracefully attired, with olive-brown complexion, hair still glossy
black, and attended by a strange gentleman with a brusque and foreign
air.
"Who is she?" says Maverick, in a great tremor. "Do the dead come to
haunt us?"
"You are facetious, my friend," said Papiol.
But in the next moment the lady opposite had raised her eyes, showing
that strange double look which had been so characteristic of Madame
Arles, and poor Papiol was himself fearfully distraught.
"It's true! It's true, _mon ami_!" he whispered his friend. "It's
Julie!--_elle même_,--Julie!"
Maverick, too, had met that glance, and he trembled like a leaf. He
gazed upon the stranger like one who sees a spectre. And she met his
glance, boldly at the first; then the light faded from her eyes, her
head drooped, and she fell in a swoon upon the shoulder of her
companion.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER FOR 1866.
II.
THE TRANSITION.
"The fact is, my dear," said my wife, "that you have thrown a stone into
a congregation of blackbirds, in writing as you have of our family wars
and wants. The response comes from all parts of the country, and the
task of looking over and answering your letters becomes increasingly
formidable. Everybody has something to say,--something to propose."
"Give me a _résumé_," said I.
"Well," said my wife, "here are three pages from an elderly gentleman,
to the effect that women are not what they used to be,--that daughters
are a great care and no help,--that girls have no health and no energy
in practical life,--that the expense of maintaining a household is so
great that young men are afraid to marry,--and that it costs more now
per annum to dress one young woman than it used to cost to carry a
whole family of sons through college. In short, the poor old gentleman
is in a desperate state of mind, and is firmly of opinion that society
is going to ruin by an express train."
"Poor old fellow!" said I, "the only comfort I can offer him is what I
take myself,--that this sad world will last out our time at least. Now
for the next."
"The next is more concise and spicy," said my wife. "I will read it.
"'_Christopher Crowfield, Esq._,
"'SIR,--If you want to know how American women are to be
brought back to family work, I can tell you a short method. Pay
them as good wages for it as they can make in any other way. I
get from seven to nine dollars a week in the shop where I work;
if I could make the same in any good family, I should have no
objection to doing it.
"'Your obedient servant,
"'LETITIA.'"
"My correspondent Letitia does not tell me," said I, "how much of this
seven or nine dollars she pays out for board and washing, fire and
lights. If she worked in a good family at two or three dollars a week,
it is easily demonstrable, that, at the present cost of these items, she
would make as much clear profit as she now does at nine dollars for her
shop-work.
"And there are two other things, moreover, which she does not consider:
First, that, besides board, washing, fuel, and lights, which she would
have in a family, she would have also less unintermitted toil. Shop-work
exacts its ten hours per diem; and it makes no allowance for sickness or
accident.
"A good domestic in a good family finds many hours when she can feel
free to attend to her own affairs. Her work consists of certain definite
matters, which being done her time is her own; and if she have skill and
address in the management of her duties, she may secure many leisure
hours. As houses are now built, and with the many labor-saving
conveniences that are being introduced, the physical labor of housework
is no more than a healthy woman really needs to keep her in health. In
case, however, of those slight illnesses to which all are more or less
liable, and which, if neglected, often lead to graver ones, the
advantage is still on the side of domestic service. In the shop and
factory, every hour of unemployed time is deducted; an illness of a day
or two is an appreciable loss of just so much money, while the expense
of board is still going on. But in the family a good servant is always
considered. When ill, she is carefully nursed as one of the family, has
the family physician, and is subject to no deduction from her wages for
loss of time. I have known more than one instance in which a valued
domestic has been sent, at her employer's expense, to the seaside or
some other pleasant locality, for change of air, when her health has
been run down.
"In the second place, family work is more remunerative, even at a lower
rate of wages, than shop or factory work, because it is better for the
health. All sorts of sedentary employment, pursued by numbers of persons
together in one apartment, are more or less debilitating and unhealthy,
through foul air and confinement.
"A woman's health is her capital. In certain ways of work she obtains
more income, but she spends on her capital to do it. In another way she
may get less income, and yet increase her capital. A woman cannot work
at dress-making, tailoring, or any other sedentary employment, ten hours
a day, year in and out, without enfeebling her constitution, impairing
her eyesight, and bringing on a complication of complaints, but she can
sweep, wash, cook, and do the varied duties of a well-ordered house with
modern arrangements, and grow healthier every year. The times, in New
England, when all women did housework a part of every day, were the
times when all women were healthy. At present, the heritage of vigorous
muscles, firm nerves, strong backs, and cheerful physical life has gone
from American women, and is taken up by Irish women. A thrifty young
man, I have lately heard of, married a rosy young Irish girl, quite to
the horror of his mother and sisters, but defended himself by the
following very conclusive logic:--'If I marry an American girl, I must
have an Irish girl to take care of her; and I cannot afford to support
both.'
"Besides all this, there is a third consideration, which I humbly
commend to my friend Letitia. The turn of her note speaks her a girl of
good common sense, with a faculty of hitting the nail square on the
head; and such a girl must see that nothing is more likely to fall out
than that she will some day be married. Evidently, our fair friend is
born to rule; and at this hour, doubtless, her foreordained throne and
humble servant are somewhere awaiting her.
"Now domestic service is all the while fitting a girl physically,
mentally, and morally for her ultimate vocation and sphere,--to be a
happy wife and to make a happy home. But factory work, shop work, and
all employments of that sort, are in their nature essentially
_undomestic_,--entailing the constant necessity of a boarding-house
life, and of habits as different as possible from the quiet routine of
home. The girl who is ten hours on the strain of continued,
unintermitted toil feels no inclination, when evening comes, to sit down
and darn her stockings, or make over her dresses, or study any of those
multifarious economies which turn a wardrobe to the best account. Her
nervous system is flagging; she craves company and excitement; and her
dull, narrow room is deserted for some place of amusement or gay street
promenade. And who can blame her? Let any sensible woman, who has had
experience of shop and factory life, recall to her mind the ways and
manners in which young girls grow up who leave a father's roof for a
crowded boarding-house, without any supervision of matron or mother, and
ask whether this is the best school for training young American wives
and mothers.
"Doubtless there are discreet and thoughtful women who, amid all these
difficulties, do keep up thrifty, womanly habits, but they do it by an
effort greater than the majority of girls are willing to make, and
greater than they ought to make. To sew or read or study after ten hours
of factory or shop work is a further drain on the nervous powers, which
no woman can long endure without exhaustion.
"When the time arrives that such a girl comes to a house of her own, she
comes to it as unskilled in all household lore, with muscles as
incapable of domestic labor, and nerves as sensitive, as if she had been
leading the most luxurious, do-nothing, fashionable life. How different
would be her preparation, had the forming years of her life been spent
in the labors of a family! I know at this moment a lady at the head of a
rich country establishment, filling her station in society with dignity
and honor, who gained her domestic education in a kitchen in our
vicinity. She was the daughter of a small farmer, and when the time came
for her to be earning her living, her parents wisely thought it far
better that she should gain it in a way which would at the same time
establish her health and fit her for her own future home. In a cheerful,
light, airy kitchen, which was kept so tidy always as to be an
attractive sitting-room, she and another young country-girl were trained
up in the best of domestic economies by a mistress who looked well to
the ways of her household, till at length they married from the house
with honor, and went to practise in homes of their own the lessons they
had learned in the home of another. Formerly, in New England, such
instances were not uncommon;--would that they might become so again!"
"The fact is," said my wife, "the places which the daughters of American
farmers used to occupy in our families are now taken by young girls from
the families of small farmers in Ireland. They are respectable, tidy,
healthy, and capable of being taught. A good mistress, who is reasonable
and liberal in her treatment, is able to make them fixtures. They get
good wages, and have few expenses. They dress handsomely, have abundant
leisure to take care of their clothes and turn their wardrobes to the
best account, and they very soon acquire skill in doing it equal to that
displayed by any women of any country. They remit money continually to
relatives in Ireland, and from time to time pay the passage of one and
another to this country,--and whole families have thus been established
in American life by the efforts of one young girl. Now, for my part, I
do not grudge my Irish fellow-citizens these advantages obtained by
honest labor and good conduct: they deserve all the good fortune thus
accruing to them. But when I see sickly, nervous American women jostling
and struggling in the few crowded avenues which are open to mere brain,
I cannot help thinking how much better their lot would have been, with
good strong bodies, steady nerves, healthy digestion, and the habit of
looking any kind of work in the face, which used to be characteristic of
American women generally, and of Yankee women in particular."
"The matter becomes still graver," said I, "by the laws of descent. The
woman who enfeebles her muscular system by sedentary occupation, and
over-stimulates her brain and nervous system, when she becomes a mother,
perpetuates these evils to her offspring. Her children will be born
feeble and delicate, incapable of sustaining any severe strain of body
or mind. The universal cry now about the ill health of young American
girls is the fruit of some three generations of neglect of physical
exercise and undue stimulus of brain and nerves. Young girls now are
universally _born_ delicate. The most careful hygienic treatment during
childhood, the strictest attention to diet, dress, and exercise,
succeeds merely so far as to produce a girl who is healthy so long only
as she does nothing. With the least strain, her delicate organism gives
out, now here, now there. She cannot study without her eyes fail or she
has headache,--she cannot get up her own muslins, or sweep a room, or
pack a trunk, without bringing on a backache,--she goes to a concert or
a lecture, and must lie by all the next day from the exertion. If she
skates, she is sure to strain some muscle; or if she falls and strikes
her knee or hits her ankle, a blow that a healthy girl would forget in
five minutes terminates in some mysterious lameness which confines our
poor sibyl for months.
"The young American girl of our times is a creature who has not
a particle of vitality to spare,--no reserved stock of force to
draw upon in cases of family exigency. She is exquisitely strung,
she is cultivated, she is refined; but she is too nervous, too
wiry, too sensitive,--she burns away too fast; only the easiest
of circumstances, the most watchful of care and nursing, can keep her
within the limits of comfortable health: and yet this is the creature
who must undertake family life in a country where it is next to an
absolute impossibility to have _permanent_ domestics. Frequent change,
occasional entire break-downs, must be the lot of the majority of
housekeepers,--particularly those who do not live in cities."
"In fact," said my wife, "we in America have so far got out of the way
of a womanhood that has any vigor of outline or opulence of physical
proportions, that, when we see a woman made as a woman ought to be, she
strikes us as a monster. Our willowy girls are afraid of nothing so much
as growing stout; and if a young lady begins to round into proportions
like the women in Titian's and Giorgione's pictures, she is distressed
above measure, and begins to make secret inquiries into reducing diet,
and to cling desperately to the strongest corset-lacing as her only
hope. It would require one to be better educated than most of our girls
are, to be willing to look like the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of
Milo.
"Once in a while our Italian opera-singers bring to our shores those
glorious physiques which formed the inspiration of Italian painters; and
then American editors make coarse jokes about Barnum's fat woman, and
avalanches, and pretend to be struck with terror at such dimensions.
"We should be better instructed, and consider that Italy does us a
favor, in sending us specimens, not only of higher styles of musical
art, but of a warmer, richer, and more abundant womanly life. The
magnificent voice is only in keeping with the magnificent proportions of
the singer. A voice which has no grate, no strain, which flows without
effort,--which does not labor eagerly up to a high note, but alights on
it like a bird from above, there carelessly warbling and trilling,--a
voice which then without effort sinks into broad, rich, sombre depths of
soft, heavy chest-tone,--can come only with a physical nature at once
strong, wide, and fine,--from a nature such as the sun of Italy ripens,
as he does her golden grapes, filling it with the new wine of song."
"Well," said I, "so much for our strictures on Miss Letitia's letter.
What comes next?"
"Here is a correspondent who answers the question, 'What shall we do
with her?'--_apropos_ to the case of the distressed young woman which we
considered in our November number."
"And what does he recommend?"
"He tells us that _he_ should advise us to make our distressed woman
Marianne's housekeeper, and to send South for three or four contrabands
for her to train, and, with great apparent complacency, seems to think
that course will solve all similar cases of difficulty."
"That's quite a man's view of the subject," said Jennie. "They think any
woman who isn't particularly fitted to do anything else can keep house."
"As if housekeeping were not the very highest craft and mystery of
social life," said I. "I admit that our sex speak too unadvisedly on
such topics, and, being well instructed by my household priestess, will
humbly suggest the following ideas to my correspondent.
"1st. A woman is not of course fit to be a housekeeper because she is a
woman of good education and refinement.
"2d. If she were, a family with young children in it is not the proper
place to establish a school for untaught contrabands, however desirable
their training may be.
"A woman of good education and good common-sense may _learn_ to be a
good housekeeper, as she learns any trade, by going into a good family
and practising first one and then another branch of the business, till
finally she shall acquire the comprehensive knowledge to direct all.
"The next letter I will read.
"'DEAR MR. CROWFIELD,--Your papers relating to the domestic
problem have touched upon a difficulty which threatens to
become a matter of life and death with me.
"'I am a young man, with good health, good courage, and good
prospects. I have, for a young man, a fair income, and a
prospect of its increase. But my business requires me to reside
in a country town near a great manufacturing city. The demand
for labor there has made such a drain on the female population
of the vicinity, that it seems, for a great part of the time,
impossible to keep any servants at all; and what we can hire
are of the poorest quality, and want exorbitant wages. My wife
was a well-trained housekeeper, and knows perfectly all that
pertains to the care of a family; but she has three little
children, and a delicate babe only a few weeks old; and _can_
any one woman do all that is needed for such a household?
Something must be trusted to servants; and what is thus trusted
brings such confusion and waste and dirt into our house, and
the poor woman is constantly distraught between the disgust of
having them and the utter impossibility of doing without them.
"'Now it has been suggested that we remedy the trouble by
paying higher wages; but I find that for the very highest wages
I secure only the most miserable service; and yet, poor as it
is, we are obliged to put up with it, because there is an
amount of work to be done in our family that is absolutely
beyond my wife's strength.
"'I see her health wearing away under these trials, her life
made a burden; I feel no power to help her; and I ask you, Mr.
Crowfield, What are we to do? What is to become of family life
in this country?
"'Yours truly,
"'A YOUNG FAMILY MAN.'
"My friend's letter," said I, "touches upon the very hinge of the
difficulty of domestic life with the present generation.
"The real, vital difficulty, after all, in our American life is, that
our country is so wide, so various, so abounding in the richest fields
of enterprise, that in every direction the cry is of the plenteousness
of the harvest and the fewness of the laborers. In short, there really
are not laborers enough to do the work of the country.
"Since the war has thrown the whole South open to the competition of
free labor, the demand for workers is doubled and trebled. Manufactories
of all sorts are enlarging their borders, increasing their machinery,
and calling for more hands. Every article of living is demanded with an
imperativeness and over an extent of territory which set at once
additional thousands to the task of production. Instead of being easier
to find hands to execute in all branches of useful labor, it is likely
to grow every year more difficult, as new departments of manufacture and
trade divide the workers. The price of labor, even now higher in this
country than in any other, will rise still higher, and thus complicate
still more the problem of domestic life. Even if a reasonable quota of
intelligent women choose domestic service, the demand will be
increasingly beyond the supply."
"And what have you to say to this," said my wife, "seeing you cannot
stop the prosperity of the country?"
"Simply this,--that communities will be driven to organize, as they now
do in Europe, to lessen the labors of individual families by having some
of the present domestic tasks done out of the house.
"In France, for example, no house-keeper counts either washing, ironing,
or bread-making as part of her domestic cares. All the family washing
goes out to a laundry; and being attended to by those who make that
department of labor a specialty, it comes home in refreshingly beautiful
order.
"We in America, though we pride ourselves on our Yankee thrift, are far
behind the French in domestic economy. If all the families of a
neighborhood should put together the sums they separately spend in
buying or fitting up and keeping in repair tubs, boilers, and other
accommodations for washing, all that is consumed or wasted in soap,
starch, bluing, fuel, together with the wages and board of an extra
servant, the aggregate would suffice to fit up a neighborhood laundry,
where one or two capable women could do easily and well what ten or
fifteen women now do painfully and ill, and to the confusion and
derangement of all other family processes.
"The model laundries for the poor in London had facilities which would
enable a woman to do both the washing and ironing of a small family in
from two to three hours, and were so arranged that a very few women
could with ease do the work of the neighborhood.
"But in the absence of an establishment of this sort, the housekeepers
of a country village might help themselves very much by owning a mangle
in common, to which all the heavier parts of the ironing could be sent.
American ingenuity has greatly improved the machinery of the mangle. It
is no longer the heavy, cumbersome structure that it used to be in the
Old World, but a compact, neat piece of apparatus, made in three or four
different sizes to suit different-sized apartments.
"Mr. H. F. Bond of Waltham, Massachusetts, now manufactures these
articles, and sends them to all parts of the country. The smallest of
them does not take up much more room than a sewing-machine, can be
turned by a boy of ten or twelve, and thus in the course of an hour or
two the heaviest and most fatiguing part of a family ironing may be
accomplished.
"I should certainly advise the 'Young Family Man' with a delicate wife
and uncertain domestic help to fortify his kitchen with one of these
fixtures.
"But after all, I still say that the quarter to which I look for the
solution of the American problem of domestic life is a wise use of the
principle of association.
"The future model village of New England, as I see it, shall have for
the use of its inhabitants not merely a town lyceum-hall and a town
library, but a town laundry, fitted up with conveniences such as no
private house can afford, and paying a price to the operators which will
enable them to command an excellence of work such as private families
seldom realize. It will also have a town bakery, where the best of
family bread, white, brown, and of all grains, shall be compounded; and
lastly a town cook-shop, where soup and meats may be bought, ready for
the table. Those of us who have kept house abroad remember the ease with
which our foreign establishments were carried on. A suite of elegant
apartments, a courier, and one female servant were the foundation of
domestic life. Our courier boarded us at a moderate expense, and the
servant took care of our rooms. Punctually to the dinner-hour every day,
our dinner came in on the head of a porter from a neighboring cook-shop.
A large chest lined with tin, and kept warm by a tiny charcoal stove in
the centre, being deposited in an ante-room, from it came forth, first,
soup, then fish, then roast of various names, and lastly pastry and
confections,--far more courses than any reasonable Christian needs to
keep him in healthy condition; and dinner being over, our box with its
_débris_ went out of the house, leaving a clear field.
"Now I put it to the distressed 'Young Family Man' whether these three
institutions of a bakery, a cook-shop, and a laundry, in the village
where he lives would not virtually annihilate his household cares, and
restore peace and comfort to his now distracted family.
"There really is no more reason why every family should make its own
bread than its own butter,--why every family should do its own washing
and ironing than its own tailoring or mantua-making. In France, where
certainly the arts of economy are well studied, there is some specialty
for many domestic needs for which we keep servants. The beautiful inlaid
floors are kept waxed and glossy by a professional gentleman who wears a
brush on his foot-sole, skates gracefully over the surface, and, leaving
all right, departeth. Many families, each paying a small sum, keep this
servant in common.
"Now if ever there was a community which needed to study the art of
living, it is our American one; for at present, domestic life is so
wearing and so oppressive as seriously to affect health and happiness.
Whatever has been done abroad in the way of comfort and convenience can
be done here; and the first neighborhood that shall set the example of
dividing the tasks and burdens of life by the judicious use of the
principle of _association_ will initiate a most important step in the
way of national happiness and prosperity.
"My solution, then, of the domestic problem may be formulized as
follows:--
"1st. That women make self-helpfulness and family helpfulness
fashionable, and every woman use her muscles daily in enough household
work to give her a good digestion.
"2d. That the situation of a domestic be made so respectable and
respected that well-educated American women shall be induced to take it
as a training-school for their future family life.
"3d. That families by association lighten the multifarious labors of the
domestic sphere.
"All of which I humbly submit to the good sense and enterprise of
American readers and workers."
GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.