RENUNCIATION
"Am I mad that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root!"
--TENNYSON.
A misty, overcast morning dawned gloomily after the night of Mrs.
Conway's ball. In spite of it the lady rose early. She had not slept
at all, and, nervous and depressed, she roamed over the disordered
house, from which the servants were busily removing the _debris_ of the
evening's entertainment. Every moment she expected to see her nephew
enter, and as the day wore on and he failed to present himself, her
impatience brooked control no longer, and she sent a messenger into
Norfolk to the National Hotel, his usual stopping-place in the city,
to inquire after him.
The boy's swift horse carried him into the city and back in two hours.
He came into the lady's presence bowing and grinning, the very picture
of a sleek, good-natured, well-fed darkey.
"Did you see him, John?"
"Yaas'm, I see him," grinned John, his hands in his pockets
complacently jingling the nickels his young master had just bestowed on
him.
"You gave him my message? What did he say?"
"Yaas'm; he say as how"--here John stopped jingling his nickels long
enough to make a low dip of his woolly head, as befitting the proper
deliverance of the message he had--"he will do heself de hon'r ob
takin' tea wid you dis even."
"Was that all he said?"
"All he says to you, ma'am--he ast me how come I stay 'long wid ole
mis' all dis time, and not go off like do rest of de little nigs? I
tell him----"
Here John stopped to chuckle softly at the remembrance.
"Well, you told him what?"
"As how old mis' couldn't git 'long 'thout me nohow," and here John
turned and made a hasty exit in obedience to a "Go along, you impudent
little monkey!" from the said "ole mis'."
He was at the gate that evening, ready to take his master's horse when
he cantered up in the gloom of the overcast sunset.
"Glad to see you, Marse Bruce. Hopes you've come to stay. De ole place
nuvver seemed like home without you," said the young darkey, who as
a boy had blacked Bruce Conway's boots, run his errands, served as
an escape-valve for all his ill humors, and withal adored him, now
welcoming him home with the hearty affection that was so deeply rooted
in his simple nature.
Freedom had not spoiled John in the least--possibly because so far as
kind treatment and almost unlimited indulgence went, he had been _free_
all his life.
But the young man merely threw him the reins, and with a careless "Take
good care of him, John," walked off in the direction of the house.
"Humph!" commented the merry little darkey, as he led the horse off
to the stable. "Sulky! I dersay he's come to give the madam fits for
lettin' of his sweetheart git married afore he come back. Serves him
right, though. Why didn't he marry her fust, and take her 'long wid him
to that furrin parts? Poor, pretty little dear! she did look just like
an angel las' night, and they do say Marse Bruce took on some when he
seen her."
For the servants had all been woefully disappointed when Bruce hurried
off to Europe without the grand wedding that the cook had prophesied
would take place between himself and Miss Grey; and the story of
the last night's _contretemps_ having been duly rumored from parlor
to kitchen, was the all-absorbing subject of comment between cook,
chambermaid, and boy-of-all-work--their sympathies and indignation
being in such a fluctuating state just now that they could hardly
decide who was the most deserving of their sympathy--the young man who,
as they phrased it, had gone off and apparently jilted his sweetheart,
or the young lady whom he had returned to find had really jilted him.
And the young man who was furnishing food for so much feminine gossip
and conjecture that day, quite heedless of it all, walked on up the
steps and into the stately presence of his expectant aunt.
She came forward very cordially, concealing any possible annoyance she
felt under an appearance of affection. She began to see that reproaches
and anger were not the way to bring this vacillating, reckless young
fellow to his senses.
"I trust you are feeling well after your fatigue of last evening," he
pleasantly observed, as they shook hands.
"No, I cannot say that I am. I have had no sleep, and felt worried and
anxious about you, my dear boy."
"I am sorry to have caused you any such annoyance," he answered,
repentantly, throwing himself wearily among the cushions of a luxurious
sofa--"very sorry, indeed, Aunt Conway. I am not worth being a source
of anxiety to any one."
The inflection of sadness and weariness in his tone touched her heart,
and swept away all lingering resentments. She looked at him as he lay
among the bright embroidered cushions, looking so handsome, yet so worn
and hopeless, and her womanly pity found vent in the simple words:
"My poor boy!"
"Don't pity me!" he answered, impatiently. "I am not deserving of pity,
and I don't want it. A man must sink very low, indeed, to become the
object of a woman's pity."
What a strange mood he was in! Accustomed to him as she was, she could
not fathom him this evening. She folded her hands in her lap and
looked at him wistfully. He grew restless under her gaze, shifting his
position so that the light should not strike on his features.
"You sent for me to give me a scolding, I suppose," he said, with a
short, dry laugh. "I am here to receive it."
"I did not," she answered. "I sent for you because this is your home,
and I want you to stay with me if you will. It is very lonely here with
no one of my kindred, Bruce, and I am getting to be quite an old woman
now. Why cannot you give me the solace of your company and affection
for my few remaining years?"
"My affection!"
No words can do justice to the reckless cynicism of his look and tone.
"Aunt Conway, I have very little affection to give any one. My heart
seems dead in my bosom. I came home, so full of noble resolves, so full
of hope, that my downfall has almost banished reason from its throne.
And as for my company, I fear I cannot even give you that. I owe it to
myself, to you, more than all to the wife of Senator Winans, to take
myself away from here, where no sight of me can recall my injustice to
her, and my crowning folly of last night."
"Bruce!"
"Well?"
"You shall not talk so--shall not leave me again. Let Mrs. Winans
alone. You have been in banishment three--nay, four years for her
already. You shall not go again. Norfolk is surely large enough for
you two to live in without crossing the path of each other. As for
what happened last night, it is rather mortifying, but it will soon be
forgotten. Stay with me, Bruce; there are plenty of beauties in Norfolk
who will soon teach you to forget Mrs. Winans."
"Forget her! Is it likely, when the prevailing topic of Norfolk is the
lovely Mrs. Winans, the brilliant Mrs. Winans, the accomplished Mrs.
Winans, with her accomplishments of fashion and folly? It seems quite
the fashion to talk about her now. No, Aunt Conway, you cannot dissuade
me from my purpose. I shall go away from here until I can learn to be
a man. Here I renounce my ill-fated love for her, and pledge myself to
forget her as an honorable man should do."
His aunt looked at him, her regret and pain mingled with admiration. He
looked so noble, so proud, so manly as he spoke, that for a moment she
felt a pang at the thought of the wrong she had done; for that she had
done wrong she knew full well. She had known of her nephew's passionate
love for Grace Grey and knew that with her he would have found all the
happiness that is vouchsafed to mortals. But for a scruple of worldly
pride and position she had separated them, punishing herself thereby;
for in the long years of his banishment she had felt too truly that she
had, in tearing apart those two loving hearts, bitterly wounded her
own. The repressed longing for her boy, the pain of knowing herself
unloved and uncared for, had been a daily thorn in her heart, a wound
"No after gladness
Could ever wholly heal."
For a moment, as she looked at him in his manly beauty and brave
renunciation, a better impulse stirred her heart, and thinking of
the fair young creature who had made such sunlight in this dreary,
splendid home, a vague wish came into her soul that she had let them
have their way, and not so rudely sundered what God had joined together.
Too late! When we take it upon ourselves to shape the life-destinies of
others we must not expect to undo our work when we find it completed
and unsatisfactory to us. When we see the hearts that our intermeddling
has bruised and torn go from us hungry and empty we must not expect
them to turn to us for the happiness we denied them.
Oh, fathers and mothers, maneuvering sisters, aunts, and relatives,
when the young birds are mating and building, why cannot you let them
alone? Why cannot you understand that your special experience and
wisdom were given you by God for your guidance alone, and that every
one cannot walk the same chalked-out path, that every thinking, living
mind must choose for itself whether or not it be wisely or well?
"As we make our beds we lie" has passed into a truth, but is it likely
that any other will make it better for us than we try to do for
ourselves? To be plain, no one has a right to dictate to us the way we
are to walk in life; or, if they have, why has God given to every one
of us thinking, reasoning, yearning minds, capable of knowing what we
want and what we need better than any one can know for us?
"Bruce," she said, gently, "I have wronged you, you know. It was wrong
of me to tempt you with my gold to desert the girl you loved, and who
loved you. I never felt until this hour how basely I had acted. If I
could undo my work I would. But I trust you may yet find happiness,
and that the memory of all this suffering may pass from your soul as
rain-drops from a rose, leaving it brighter and lovelier after the
storm."
"Nay," he said, smiling faintly and sadly, "since you have descended to
simile, let me remind you that there are two sides thereto. How often
have I seen in this lovely garden of yours the crushed rose-leaves
covering the ground, rain-beaten, pallid, and torn, as the storm had
passed and left them. So it is most likely to be with me."
"I trust not. At any rate, Bruce, I ask your forgiveness. It is asking
much, I know, when I reflect that but for me you would have wedded the
girl you loved, and who, through my fault, is irrevocably lost to you.
But you are all I have to love--all I have to love! Don't deny me."
"I do not," he answered, slowly. "Don't blame yourself entirely Aunt
Conway. Blame my weak, wavering, vacillating will, that made me
hesitate between Grace Grey and the noble inheritance you offered me.
We are about equal, I think. I sold myself--you bought me!"
Oh, Grace, you are avenged! Deeply as you scorned him your contempt was
not deeper than that which in this hour he felt for himself.
"I thank you, Bruce, dear boy, that you do not accord me all the blame,
though I feel I fully deserve it. Let us change the subject to one more
pleasant."
"In one moment, but first I have a confession to make. You may hear it
from others, so I would like you to hear it first from me. You know
that I am truthful, though unstable, and you can believe just what I
say--not all the varnished reports you may hear."
"Go on," she said anxiously, as he paused.
"Well, then, I left you last night in a bad state of mind. I was mad,
I think--simply mad--and in Norfolk I took more wine than was good
for me. I swore to myself that I would not give up Grace. I hated her
husband for having won her--I hated the child that calls _her_ mother
and _him_ father--I hated you for separating us, and I swore that as
she had loved me once she should love me again. Under the influence of
this madness I took a guitar and sung under the window of the grand
Winans' mansion a love-song--yes, aunt," laughing a little as she
recoiled in dismay, "I dared to sing a love-song--I dared to serenade
the married belle of society and queen of beauty with a love-song she
had sung for me on the eve of our parting four years ago."
"Oh, Bruce! what have you done?"
"Gotten myself into a difficulty, perhaps. The question is, did they
hear me, or were they all asleep? If they heard and know me, I have
undoubtedly provoked the wrath of that haughty Senator who calls her
his own. I propose to extricate myself from this dilemma by leaving the
place as quietly as I returned; not through cowardice, Aunt Conway, I
won't have you think that," his eye flashed proudly, "but because I
have caused her trouble enough already. I'll not stay here to bring
further trouble and comment upon her. I won't have her pure name
dragged through the scandal of an affair of honor. The only thing is to
go away--that is the only reparation I can make, to go away and forget
her, and be myself forgotten."
There was much that was noble in him yet; much that was high-toned,
chivalric, high-spirited, and tender--all of it, alas, marred by that
vacillating will, that wavering, doubting nature that was so long in
making its mind up, and when made up soon changed it again.
The tea-bell suspended further converse on the subject. He gave her his
arm in courtly fashion, and they descended to the dining-room, both
too preoccupied to observe the curious kindly black faces that peeped
at them from obscure stations, eager to see the handsome young master
they remembered so well, and to see how he looked "since he'd come back
and found his sweetheart married and gone," as if people wore their
hearts in their faces. Ah, if they did what a gruesome looking crowd
would meet us whithersoever we went.
Dainty and elegant as was the evening meal, I think Bruce Conway and
his handsome old aunt scarcely did justice to it. Her callous, worldly
heart was stirred as it had not been for years. For Bruce, I think he
might as well have eaten chips for all he enjoyed the spring chicken,
the pickled oysters, the rosy ham, and warmly-browned biscuit, the
golden honey and preserves, the luscious fruits, the fragrant tea
and chocolate. Across the glimmer of flowers, and silver, and dainty
cut-glass, and edibles, a shadowy form sat in the vacant chair at the
opposite side of the table, which had been the wonted place of the
rosy reality. A girl's fair face looked across at him, her white hands
trifled with the silver knife and fork, reached the preserve across
to him, poured the cream into his tea, showed him a dozen kindly
attentions, and once he said, absently, "No, I thank you, Grace," and
looked up into the shiny black face of John, who was changing his
plates for him, and who nearly exploded with repressed laughter, but
said, with mock earnestness, and a pretense of misapprehension:
"Ole mis' nuvver say Grace afore meals, Marse Bruce, cepen' 'tis when
de minister stays to tea, sir."
"Leave the room, you young scamp," said Mr. Conway, irascibly, and
John went, nothing loth to indulge himself in a fit of laughter at the
expense of his beloved young "Marse Bruce." But the little incident
served to make Bruce more wide-awake, and rousing himself to realities
the pansy-eyed phantom fled away from Mrs. Conway's well-appointed
table.
"That boy is a perfect clown," complained the lady; "he's not fit to
wait on the table at all. I shall have to secure a good dining-room
servant."
Mrs. Conway had said this so often that there was small danger of its
being put into execution. She was attached in a great degree to the
servants around her, all of whom had belonged to her in the days of
slavery, and who when "set free," during the war, had, unlike the
majority of the freedmen who sought new homes, promptly taken service
at extravagant wages from their whilom mistress and owner. John had
grown up to his seventeenth year in the service of his indulgent "ole
miss," and he was fully persuaded of the interesting fact that she
"couldn't do 'thout him, nohow."
After tea the two repaired to the brightly lighted drawing-room.
The dull damp day rendered the closed shutters rather agreeable
than otherwise, and shut out thus, from the sight of much that
would have pained him, the young man made an effort to entertain
his aunt, narrating many of his adventures abroad, and interesting
an unthought-of listener, who was lazily curled up outside the door
listening to the sprightly converse of the returned traveler.
"Wonder if all dat _kin_ be true," pondered John, dubiously; "but
course 'tis, if Marse Bruce says so. John Andrew Jackson Johnson, you
ain't fitten to be a Conway nigger if you can't believe what your young
gentleman tells," and thus apostrophizing himself, John relapsed into
silence. Nevertheless, his mouth and eyes during the next hour were
often extended to their utmost capacity, and I fear that if any other
than Bruce Conway had presumed to relate such remarkable things, John
would have been tempted to doubt his veracity.
A sharp peal of the door-bell compelled him to forego his pleasant
occupation to answer it. He came back with a card on a silver salver.
"Gentl'man to see Marse Bruce; showed him into libr'y, sir; he wished
to see you 'lone, sir," announced John, with much dignity.
Mr. Conway took the card, and Mrs. Conway looked over his shoulder.
"Captain Frank Fontenay, U. S. A.," he read aloud, and Mrs. Conway said:
"A military gentleman--who is he, Bruce? I don't know him."
"Nor I," said her nephew, grimly.
He was white as marble, but his dark eyes never wavered in their firm,
cold glitter. Whatever else he was, Bruce Conway was not a coward. He
gently released himself from his aunt's detaining hand.
"I will go and see this gentleman," he said.
"Oh, Bruce!"--she clung to him in a nervous, hysterical tremor--"I feel
as if something dreadful were going to happen. Don't see him at all."
He smiled at her womanly fears.
"My dear aunt, don't be hysterical. John, call Mrs. Conway's maid
to attend her. Aunt Conway, there is nothing to alarm you--nothing
at all;" and, putting her back on her sofa, he went out to meet his
unbidden guest.
The captain was a fine-looking man, of perhaps forty years, blue-eyed,
blonde-haired, and much be-whiskered. He stood very courteously in the
middle of the floor, hat in hand, as Bruce entered the library.
"Mr. Conway?" he interrogated, smoothly.
"At your service, sir," said Bruce.
"Mr. Conway," said the gentleman, with a glittering smile that showed
all his lovely white teeth, "I am the bearer to you of a message from
Senator Winans. My friend, sir, considers himself insulted by you, and
demands such satisfaction as all gentlemen accord each other."
He placed an open note in Mr. Conway's hand, who silently perused it.
It was a challenge to fight a duel.
"Any friend of yours can call on me to-morrow at three to settle the
preliminaries," suggested the blonde captain, placidly smiling up into
Mr. Conway's impassive face, and taking his acceptance for granted.
"Very well, sir; I will send a friend of mine to you quite punctually
at three to-morrow. Is that satisfactory for the present?"
"Quite so, sir; very much so, sir," smoothly returned Captain Fontenay,
bowing his quite imposing military presence out.