COSTLY GRAPES.
When Dan left his father’s house after his rejection by Miss Marston,
he was really wretched for the first time in his life; yet the
experience did not soften him as fine natures are softened by unhappy
love. Between his set teeth he called her hard names, and cursed himself
for giving her the opportunity to reject his offer. He passed Susie
during this walk, who, being surprised, looked up into his face with the
old light in her eyes. He met her eyes as we meet a stranger’s, without
a sign of recognition; whereat the poor girl’s limbs trembled, and
putting down her veil after passing him, she walked on blinded by her
tears.
In his frame of mind, Dan looked upon all women as his enemies, and
especially Susie, but for whom he might have won the queenly Miss
Marston. But for the recentness of his rebuff, he would have spoken
kindly enough to Susie, for he was capable of pity, and he had
considerable affection in his nature, though it was of the bearish kind,
wholly divested of that sensitive, tender element which, when a woman
has once known it, makes valueless all other love of men. It is not
found in common men, however, who are mostly capable of violent
demonstration, without any of that high sentiment which seeks only to
learn the real desire of the loved one, and then studies to gratify it,
finding keen delight in that, and that alone. It is true, also, that few
women are capable of inspiring such a sentiment, and so the world knows
little of the highest phase of the passion of love. Susie had never
known any love but Dan’s, and though it had occurred to her that there
might be kisses, for example, not so much like the pounce of a hawk upon
a pigeon, as his were, still she had loved him with all her heart, and
it was terrible, even when she knew he had ceased to love her, to think
that he could pass her in the street without a sign of recognition. But
Susie had outlived that experience, and with the certainty that he was
lost to her forever, and with time and the accession of new thoughts and
cares, and especially with the interest Clara had succeeded in awakening
in regular daily study, her grief lessened. There were, first hours, and
then whole days, when there were no heart-aches on his account. Over the
thought of this she would invariably rejoice, as over a great triumph,
until some treacherous retrospection of happier days quickened the old
tenderness into life—renewed agonies that she thought were quieted
forever, and revealed her situation as dreadful beyond mortal endurance.
After Miss Marston left Oakdale, Dan went home once or twice, but it was
like a strange place to him. His father, to be sure, treated him much
the same, and never alluded to Susie by any accident. Mrs. Forest pitied
him more than ever, and Clara was at least polite to him on all
occasions. He could see and feel, however, that his conduct was
detestable in her eyes, and as for Leila and Linnie, he considered them
of slight importance. One day he discovered that Clara knew of his
offering himself to Miss Marston, and of the galling manner with which
he had been refused, and this made him furious. Miss Marston, then, had
despised him too much to keep his humiliation a secret, as any honorable
woman would do under ordinary circumstances.
Miss Marston would indeed have been the last person to reveal such a
thing, but the day before her departure, in a long talk with Clara, she
expressed the desire that Clara would make it certain to Susie that Dan
was nothing to her. “You know,” she said, “how a person in her abandoned
condition would naturally feel toward one she supposed the cause of her
being abandoned. Do convince her that there has never been the slightest
encouragement on my part—no intimacy whatever between me and your
brother, no thought of correspondence, or anything of the kind;” and
then she told Clara of the last meeting with Dan, and expressed
unqualified disapproval of him altogether; at the same time sending kind
messages to Susie, and a present of a microscope for her botanical
studies.
“There is one thing I have wished to ask you, Miss Marston,” said Clara,
“but I have never dared to. Will you tell me just your true impressions
of Albert?” Miss Marston did not reply satisfactorily, and Clara,
putting her arm around her rather timidly, for the teacher that
expressed itself in every word and manner, still continued to awe Clara,
as it had done in Stonybrook, urged a reply. She had often noticed Miss
Marston studying Albert. The two were very polite to each other, but it
was easy to see that there was little true sympathy between them. Thus
urged, Miss Marston answered: “I have studied him carefully, because he
has your happiness in his hands. I confess I fear greatly that you are
not just the kind of wife he should select.” Clara was grieved, not
understanding Miss Marston, and she said quickly, “I have often wondered
that he should think so highly of me.”
“No, no. It is not a question of your worthiness. You are worthy, I
think, of any one—certainly of Dr. Delano; but there is a
self-sufficiency, well concealed by his culture, that will some time be
very apt to run counter to your ideas of justice and devotion. I only
say I fear, understand. I may be wrong; but I would urge you to avoid
the first misunderstanding. It would be hard, I think, for him to
examine himself with merciless justice. You have that power, which I see
you inherit from your father, who is a wonderfully superior man.”
“Liberally translated,” said Clara, smiling, “you think Albert a tyrant.
You do not understand him fully, I think, but I am glad of your frank
opinion. I shall be careful to be good and just to him, and I think I
shall never have cause to admire him less than I do now;” and Clara went
on revealing, little by little, to Miss Marston a sentiment so near
adoration that it almost appalled her, and convinced her still further
that such an exalted passion could never find full response, nor be even
comprehended by Albert Delano; but she said no more. The next day she
left Oakdale. Her trunk had been sent to the station, which was but a
short distance, and she and Clara were to walk. They passed Mrs.
Buzzell’s cottage, and Miss Marston gratified Clara greatly by calling
on Susie, and being really kind and friendly to her, a proceeding that
quite astonished Mrs. Forest when she heard of it.
As the weeks passed Mrs. Buzzell bravely stemmed the current of popular
disapprobation at her act of “countenancing vice;” for the consciousness
of doing right was enhanced by the good qualities she was constantly
discovering in Susie. Mrs. Buzzell’s temper, never very sweet, had not
improved by years of loneliness, and when criticised by her female
friends, she gave them back “as good as they sent,” to use her own
words; and so it came to pass that the piously-disposed ladies of the
congregation to which Mrs. Buzzell belonged, and which had barely
escaped receiving Susie as a member, had not the opportunity to
patronize Susie, and to extend charity to her in that condescending way
too well known to many an unfortunate. The continuance of such patronage
depends upon the utter humility of the recipient. She must confess
herself a vile sinner, be willing to take thankfully the position of the
lowest scrub, and express in every act that her patronizers are above
her as the stars above the earth. Let the victim dare to show any
ambition to regain her self-respect, any dissatisfaction because the
daughters of her patronizers treat her with contempt, while they smile
graciously upon the author of her degradation, and the patronage ceases
at once.
“This is the way society protects itself,” said Mrs. Buzzell to Mrs.
Kendrick, the banker’s wife, one of the would-be patronizers; “but is
there not something wrong in the system that blasts and destroys the
woman, while it winks at the sin of the man? I have come to see that in
most cases, as in this, for example, her fault is much less than his.
Man is taught self-dependence from the cradle; woman to depend upon man;
and when she does so to the utmost limit, trusting every hope of
happiness in his honor, this is a common result. We have called the
doctor a radical, and graciously excused his eccentricities because he
is so good a physician and so kind a man; but face to face with such
facts, I see he is nearer right than we are.”
“Your judgment is misled by your sympathies, Mrs. Buzzell,” said the
banker’s lady. “Do you not see that if unmarried mothers and their
children are to be respected, there is no safety for legal wives and
legitimate children? If society comes to recognize the position of
mistress as respectable, to be a wife will be a very questionable
honor.”
“Well, I sometimes think it is,” said Mrs. Buzzell, turning over in her
mind this new and practical view of the case, and forgetting, in a kind
of dreamy retrospection, that a moment before she had intended to smite
Mrs. Kendrick “hip and thigh.”
“They think we lose our youth when we begin to fade a little,” said Mrs.
Kendrick, “when in fact we are then more sensitive than ever to the
better part of love; and having a baby makes a very baby of a woman in
this respect. Do what we will, though, we cannot keep the very element
in a man’s love without which we don’t care for his love at all; and
children hardly prove the consolation we expect, except, indeed, when
they are babies. When they grow older they go from us, they wound us,
and seem to spend half their lives fighting against our desires. After
all, it is better to keep our thoughts beyond this world. I find,
myself, very little pleasure in it.”
It was very seldom that Mrs. Kendrick gave any expression to the dark
under-current of her life. She passed for a very happy woman, and Mrs.
Forest considered her position every way enviable. Her husband was rich,
as all husbands should be in her opinion, as a duty they owe to society,
and he was never known to be eccentric in anything. Mrs. Forest would
have found him perfect. As a young man he had been enthusiastic, loved
art and poetry, and talked of high purposes in life. He had even written
very fair verses himself, and his wife, before marriage and some time
after, had adored him; but he had in time so changed the diet of his
soul, that whereas it once seemed wholly to feed upon grand aspirations,
and upon the beautiful in all things, it now gorged itself upon bonds
and stocks, and assimilated vast quantities of the nutriment. His
romantic wife became practical too, but she was bitter over the loss of
her illusions, and turned the whole current of her life into social
ambition. She had the finest establishment in the county, and she seemed
to study day and night to show her husband how dependent she was upon
society—how little upon him—for her sum of happiness. For years they had
ceased to wound each other’s vanity, as married people do after the
romance is outlived and the conjugal yoke begins to gall them. It was
not worth the trouble. Society held them up as shining examples of
conjugal felicity. They always spoke of each other before the world in a
tone of reserve, as if the nature of their mutual relations was too
sacred to be questioned or discussed. And yet, with all this outside
homage and interior luxury, with all her fine carriages and horses,
elegant toilettes, splendid gardens and green-houses, Mrs. Kendrick
really found life a burden, as thousands of women do in her position,
not knowing that their trouble is the want of a wider sphere of action.
Mr. Kendrick must have been enormously rich. It was the wonder of all
the country round that so much money could be squandered without the
least effect upon the supply. Wise heads declared that Kendrick’s farms
and grounds were badly managed, and it was well known that,
notwithstanding the extent and cost of keeping his gardens and
green-houses, flowers had to be ordered from professional florists on
every occasion of a grand reception. Kendrick himself tried to take
interest in his winter-gardens. In one there was a large black Hamburg
grape-vine, bearing one magnificent bunch of fruit. He had watched this
from day to day, but he knew nothing of the art of cultivation under
glass, and was made to feel himself a very second-rate object when in
the presence of the head-gardener, who was a pompous and important
functionary. During the last winter Mr. Kendrick, in paying the coal
bill, took the trouble to glance over it. The winter was not yet ended,
and there were seventy-five tons of coal consumed for the hot-houses! On
this occasion Mr. Kendrick ventured to go to the head-gardener and
suggest mildly his astonishment at the consumption of coal. The
functionary pointed reproachfully to that bunch of black Hamburgs, and
Mr. Kendrick was silent.
On the occasion of Mrs. Kendrick’s call, she asked Mrs. Buzzell, as she
rose to go, if she could do anything to help her in the responsibility
she had assumed. “I want your sympathy of course,” replied Mrs. Buzzell.
“It is not pleasant to feel that you are condemned for doing what you
know to be your duty.”
“I certainly do not condemn you,” said Mrs. Kendrick; “but I could never
do myself what you are doing; and I think you would see your duty in a
different light if you were the mother of a marriageable daughter.”
“What then are we to do, as Christians, in cases like this?”
“Oh, I suppose there ought to be a respectable institution for them,
where they could find protection and work to do, and some provision made
for the education of their children. I would give something towards the
establishment of such an institution; but I could not afford to defend
openly a girl like this, as you are doing.”
“But don’t you see, that the religion of Christ plainly teaches us to
forgive the erring, and so help them to a higher life.”
“My dear Mrs. Buzzell, the Christian religion, as interpreted to-day,
adapts itself to the exigencies of society. That religion, as taught by
Christ and his apostles, would be as much out of place in our present
social system as a monk would be in a modern ball-room.”
When Dr. Forest called, a day or two after, Mrs. Buzzell told him of
Mrs. Kendrick’s speech. “She is more of a philosopher than I thought,”
he said.
“But don’t you think that a very shocking way to look at religion,
doctor?”
“Ah! my dear friend; it should never shock us to hear a truth. The only
real Christians, according to the original type, to be found to-day, are
among certain orders of the Catholic church, who literally ‘take no heed
of the morrow,’ never have ‘scrip in their purse,’ or a second suit of
clothes. They literally crucify the flesh, and study to be just like
Christ. Mrs. Kendrick is perfectly right. You see, in helping and
befriending one like Susie, whom modern society despises and neglects,
you are a very old-fashioned kind of Christian, though not necessarily
of the primitive type.”
“Well, if I can only be a Christian in the _true_ sense, whatever that
may be, it is all I ask for myself,” said Mrs. Buzzell, earnestly.
“And by that you mean pure in all your thoughts, and upright in all your
dealings, and nothing else.”
“Certainly I do.”
“Well, that is what I call true morality. You call it by a different
name. We don’t differ so much. For bigot and infidel, we stand very
comfortably near together, I should say,” said the doctor, smiling. Mrs.
Buzzell saw she had admitted too much by that “nothing else,” but she
did not feel like arguing, and so turned the subject.