It was not many minutes after this before Mrs. Rolfe found herself
across the street and closeted with Alice. “I am too tired and nervous
to talk now,” Mary had said; “wait till to-morrow; or, if you are very
impatient, ask Alice to tell you. She knows all.”
“My dear Alice,” asked Mrs. Rolfe, for the twentieth time, at the close
of a two-hours’ investigation, “who _is_ this Mr. Don or Smith? Who is
his father? Who is his mother? How am I to know that my daughter is not
interested in an adventurer or an escaped lunatic?”
Alice did her best to reassure Mrs. Rolfe on this point; adding, with a
becoming little blush, that she did not rely upon her own judgment,
solely,—that e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y was sure that the Don was all that he
should be.
“E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y! Then why don’t you take him yourself? I suppose this
same e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y objected!”
“Oh!”
That was all that this whilom merry babbler could say. Her chin (just as
though it thought itself the most highly improper little chin in the
world) tried to hide between her shoulder and her throat, nestling down
somewhere. In those days we thought it was becoming,—that sudden rush
of roses to a young girl’s cheek. Now she will look you straight in the
face, and tell you without blinking that next spring she is to marry a
man weighing (just as likely as not) two hundred pounds. It is
straightforward, and manly, and “good form,”—but some of us can’t
forget the old way, and like it still.
“I must confess, Alice, that I can make nothing of the whole business.
You tell me that Mary’s suitor is entirely devoted to her, and that
every one has the highest respect for him. His incognito need not
trouble me, you say, since its removal is only delayed,—and delayed,
too, through some romantic whim or other of Mary herself. But there is
one thing which nothing you say explains; that everything you say
darkens; why is the poor child so wretched?”
Alice was silent.
“Alice,” continued Mrs. Rolfe, placing her hand affectionately on the
young girl’s shoulder, “have you told me all? It is Mary’s express
injunction that you do so, you know.”
Alice seemed to have something to say, but hesitated.
“Ah, I see,” cried Mrs. Rolfe, jumping to a conclusion. “He _has_ thrown
off his incognito, and there was something dreadful,—a living wife in a
lunatic asylum—or—”
Alice smiled. “No, it is nothing of that kind. To tell you the truth, it
is all nonsense. Mary is making a mountain of a mole-hill.”
“A mountain of a mole-hill?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“It is all perfectly absurd—”
“What disturbs the poor child,—tell me?”
“Some nonsensical fears as to his religious tendencies.”
“His religious tendencies?” echoed Mrs. Rolfe, puzzled. Suddenly light
seemed to break upon her. “For heaven’s sake, Alice,” she cried, pale
with anxiety, “you do not mean to say that he is a Catholic! Don’t tell
me that. Tell me that he is a—a—an Atheist,—anything but a Catholic!”
“An Atheist rather than a Catholic?” said Alice, raising her eyes to
those of Mrs. Rolfe for the first time for several minutes.
“Most assuredly; a thousand times rather. Why, when I was a girl,
several of my acquaintances married young men who were pleased to
consider themselves sceptics,—it was rather the fashion in those
days,—but, bless you, the last one of them was a vestryman before five
years of married life had passed. But a Catholic! Heaven forbid! One of
two things, Alice, invariably happens to a Protestant girl who marries a
Catholic. Either, halting between opposing claims, she loses all
interest in religion itself, or else she goes over to the enemy. Oh,
Alice, Alice,” cried she, with sudden vehemence, “do not tell me that my
poor Mary loves a Catholic! Lost to me in this world—and—”
I will tell you, my Ah Yung Whack, what Mrs. Rolfe was going to say when
Alice interrupted her with a merry laugh. She was going to add, “lost in
the next.”
It was, indeed, as I have hinted in earlier chapters of this work, the
settled conviction of the Protestants of Virginia, at that day, that all
Catholics were as surely destined to the bottomless pit as the very
heathen who had never so much as heard a whisper of the Glad Tidings.
(My Catholic friends often complained to me of this bigotry. For my
part, I hardly knew whether to laugh or to weep when I remembered that
they had made precisely the same arrangements for my Protestant
acquaintance.)
“Why, who told you he was a Catholic?”
“Heaven be praised! Then what _is_ he, pray?”
“I am afraid he is a little sceptical,—or—or—something.”
“And is that all? Sceptical or something! Capital, Alice!” cried she,
with a bright laugh. “You have hit them off to a nicety. Sceptical or
something,—that’s just it. You see, my dear, when the beard begins to
sprout on a youth’s chin, he fancies that it is time he had opinions of
his own. At this period he begins to sneer at the ‘fiery furnace’ story,
and discovers that whales, though their mouths be large, have small
throats, and could never have swallowed Jonah. _His_ throat, at any
rate, is too small to swallow such musty tales,—leave that to the old
women! Sceptical or something! Excellent, excellent, Alice! Ah, that
merry tongue of yours!”
“I am delighted that you take so philosophical a view of the case,” said
Alice, much taken aback at this unexpected praise of her wit. She might
have added that she was amazed. How often do those we know best utterly
confound us in this way! Mrs. Rolfe was what some lukewarm people called
fanatically pious; and Alice had been looking forward with dread to the
scene that poor Mary must have with her when she learned that her
daughter had given her heart to a sceptic (or something). Strange! it
was the very energy of this fanaticism which wrought the result which so
surprised Alice. It is possible for convictions to be so strong as to
inspire a merry incredulity touching the honesty of opposing beliefs.
“Why, of course,” rejoined Mrs. Rolfe, smiling complacently. (It was the
word philosophical that did the business.) “The fact is, my dear, there
_are_ no infidels. It is all the merest affectation. Most young men pass
through an attack of scepticism, just as, earlier in life, teething must
be gone through with. It is a cheap mode of earning a reputation for
brains. With girls, this striving to be brilliant takes a different
shape. Many young women cultivate sarcasm for a year or so after leaving
school, not having seen enough of mankind to know that a satirical turn
infallibly indicates the combination of a bad heart with an empty head.
But people of experience learn to pardon these foibles of youth. The
fact is, Alice,” added Mrs. Rolfe, smiling, “I know nothing in life more
deliciously comic than a young graduate posing as a ‘thinker.’ Of
course, if they are loud-mouthed—”
“That, at least, he is not.”
“Of course not, of course not; since I hear he is a gentleman. But how,
pray, does he show that he is a sceptic, or something? (Capital phrase,
upon my word, Alice!) How do you know it?”
“During the whole time that he has been at Elmington he has never
once—I am afraid it is more serious than you imagine—”
“Go on!”
“Never once put his foot inside the church.”
“Impossible!” cried Mrs. Rolfe. “Why, ’tisn’t genteel!”
“Never _once_!”
“And his apology?”
“The Don apologizing!” broke in Alice, with a little laugh. “You don’t
know him!”
“What! paying court to my daughter, and allowing her to go to church,
Sunday after Sunday, without ever offering to attend her? I should just
have liked Mr. Rolfe to have tried that game with _me_! Even now,—and
we have been married thirty years! just fancy _me_ marching off to
church alone!”
To do Mr. Rolfe justice, those who knew him and the partner of his bosom
best would never have suspected him of trying to play any such game on
Mrs. Rolfe in their courting days, still less now. He discovered during
the first month of the first year of the thirty alluded to, that his
Araminta was a woman of views; and he had spent the twenty-nine years
and eleven months immediately preceding these observations of Mrs. Rolfe
in learning just what those views were, that he might the better conform
to the same.
“The i-d-e-a!” chirped Alice.
“Yes, indeed. And if Mary will be guided by _me_— Upon my word, Alice,
aren’t we both too absurd! Has the wedding-day been fixed? If so, I have
not heard of it. Before _that_ happens, your Mr. Don, or whatever he is,
will have to have a talk with _me_—I mean Mr. Rolfe.” (Which, as she
went on to explain, was, as in all harmonious households, one and the
same thing. She could not remember, in fact, _when_ she had expressed an
opinion different from Mr. Rolfe’s.)
Sly was Mr. Rolfe, they say; who always let his wife have the first
say,—and then he had her just where he wanted her.
“He won’t find _me_,—or, rather, Mr. Rolfe,—so sentimental as to
refuse to hear who he is!”
In the end our spirited matron was much mollified at learning that the
Don had not been “paying court” to her daughter, and yet, at the same
time, publicly slighting her. The affair had been so sudden, etc., etc.
But Alice’s master-stroke was delivered when she told how the Don had
fought against the avowal of his love.
Ah! they never, as we men do, get so old as quite to forget all their
romance, these women!
“Honor is a good thing to begin with,” said she. “As to the church
business, I think we shall be able to manage _that_,” she added, with a
slightly influential expression about those lips which had so often
carried conviction to the peace-loving bosom of the harmonious Mr.
Rolfe.
“Provided, of course—” continued she.
“Oh, of course,” chimed in Alice.