_THE SPIDER-WEB BROKEN._
HARRY did not go back, to lead the “German,” as he had been engaged to
do. In fact, in his last apologies to Mrs. Follingsbee, he had excused
himself on account of his partner’s sudden indisposition,—a thing which
made no small buzz and commotion; though the missing gap, like all gaps
great and little in human society, soon found somebody to step into it:
and the dance went on just as gayly as if they had been there.
Meanwhile, there were in this good city of New York a couple of
sleepless individuals, revolving many things uneasily during the
night-watches, or at least that portion of the night-watches that
remained after they reached home,—to wit, Mr. Harry Endicott and Miss
Rose Ferguson.
What had taken place in that little scene between Lillie and Harry,
the termination of which was seen by Rose? We are not going to give
a minute description. The public has already been circumstantially
instructed by such edifying books as “Cometh up as a Flower,” and
others of a like turn, in what manner and in what terms married women
can abdicate the dignity of their sex, and degrade themselves so far
as to offer their whole life, and their whole selves, to some reluctant
man, with too much remaining conscience or prudence to accept the
sacrifice.
It was from some such wild, passionate utterances of Lillie that Harry
felt a recoil of mingled conscience, fear, and that disgust which man
feels when she, whom God made to be sought, degrades herself to seek.
There is no edification and no propriety in highly colored and minute
drawing of such scenes of temptation and degradation, though they
are the stock and staple of some French novels, and more disgusting
English ones made on their model. Harry felt in his own conscience
that he had been acting a most unworthy part, that no advances on the
part of Lillie could excuse his conduct; and his thoughts went back
somewhat regretfully to the days long ago, when she was a fair, pretty,
innocent girl, and he had loved her honestly and truly. Unperceived
by himself, the character of Rose was exerting a powerful influence
over him; and, when he met that look of pain and astonishment which he
had seen in her large blue eyes the night before, it seemed to awaken
many things within him. It is astonishing how blindly people sometimes
go on as to the character of their own conduct, till suddenly, like a
torch in a dark place, the light of another person’s opinion is thrown
in upon them, and they begin to judge themselves under the quickening
influence of another person’s moral magnetism. Then, indeed, it often
happens that the graves give up their dead, and that there is a sort
of interior resurrection and judgment.
Harry did not seem to be consciously thinking of Rose, and yet the
undertone of all that night’s uneasiness was a something that had
been roused and quickened in him by his acquaintance with her. How he
loathed himself for the last few weeks of his life! How he loathed
that hot, lurid, murky atmosphere of flirtation and passion and French
sentimentality in which he had been living!—atmosphere as hard to draw
healthy breath in as the odor of wilting tuberoses the day after a
party.
Harry valued Rose’s good opinion as he had never valued it before;
and, as he thought of her in his restless tossings, she seemed to him
something as pure, as wholesome, and strong as the air of his native
New-England hills, as the sweet-brier and sweet-fern he used to love
to gather when he was a boy. She seemed of a piece with all the good
old ways of New England,—its household virtues, its conscientious sense
of right, its exact moral boundaries; and he felt somehow as if she
belonged to that healthy portion of his life which he now looked back
upon with something of regret.
Then, what would she think of him? They had been friends, he said to
himself; they had passed over those boundaries of teasing unreality
where most young gentlemen and young ladies are content to hold
converse with each other, and had talked together reasonably and
seriously, saying in some hours what they really thought and felt.
And Rose had impressed him at times by her silence and reticence in
certain connections, and on certain subjects, with a sense of something
hidden and veiled,—a reserved force that he longed still further to
penetrate. But now, he said to himself, he must have fallen in her
opinion. Why was she so cold, so almost haughty, in her treatment of
him the night before? He felt in the atmosphere around her, and in the
touch of her hand, that she was quivering like a galvanic battery with
the suppressed force of some powerful emotion; and his own conscience
dimly interpreted to him what it might be.
To say the truth, Rose was terribly aroused. And there was a great deal
in her to be aroused, for she had a strong nature; and the whole force
of womanhood in her had never received such a shock.
Whatever may be scoffingly said of the readiness of women to pull one
another down, it is certain that the highest class of them have the
feminine _esprit de corps_ immensely strong. The humiliation of another
woman seems to them their own humiliation; and man’s lordly contempt
for another woman seems like contempt of themselves.
The deepest feeling roused in Rose by the scenes which she saw last
night was concern for the honor of womanhood; and her indignation at
first did not strike where we are told woman’s indignation does, on
the woman, but on the man. Loving John Seymour as a brother from her
childhood, feeling in the intimacy in which they had grown up as if
their families had been one, the thoughts that had been forced upon
her of his wife the night before had struck to her heart with the
weight of a terrible affliction. She judged Lillie as a pure woman
generally judges another,—out of herself,—and could not and would
not believe that the gross and base construction which had been put
upon her conduct was the true one. She looked upon her as led astray
by inordinate vanity, and the hopeless levity of an undeveloped,
unreflecting habit of mind. She was indignant with Harry for the part
that he had taken in the affair, and indignant and vexed with herself
for the degree of freedom and intimacy which she had been suffering
to grow up between him and herself. Her first impulse was to break it
off altogether, and have nothing more to say to or do with him. She
felt as if she would like to take the short course which young girls
sometimes take out of the first serious mortification or trouble in
their life, and run away from it altogether. She would have liked to
have packed her trunk, taken her seat on board the cars, and gone home
to Springdale the next day, and forgotten all about the whole of it;
but then, what should she say to Mrs. Van Astrachan? what account could
she give for the sudden breaking up of her visit?
Then, there was Harry going to call on her the next day! What ought
she to say to him? On the whole, it was a delicate matter for a young
girl of twenty to manage alone. How she longed to have the counsel
of her sister or her mother! She thought of Mrs. Van Astrachan; but
then, again, she did not wish to disturb that good lady’s pleasant,
confidential relations with Harry, and tell tales of him out of school:
so, on the whole, she had a restless and uncomfortable night of it.
Mrs. Van Astrachan expressed her surprise at seeing Rose take her place
at the breakfast-table the next morning. “Dear me!” she said, “I was
just telling Jane to have some breakfast kept for you. I had no idea of
seeing you down at this time.”
“But,” said Rose, “I gave out entirely, and came away only an hour
after you did. The fact is, we country girls can’t stand this sort of
thing. I had such a terrible headache, and felt so tired and exhausted,
that I got Mr. Endicott to bring me away before the ‘German.’”
“Bless me!” said Mr. Van Astrachan; “why, you’re not at all up to
snuff! Why, Polly, you and I used to stick it out till daylight! didn’t
we?”
“Well, you see, Mr. Van Astrachan, I hadn’t anybody like you to stick
it out with,” said Rose. “Perhaps that made the difference.”
“Oh, well, now, I am sure there’s our Harry! I am sure a girl must be
difficult, if he doesn’t suit her for a beau,” said the good gentleman.
“Oh, Mr. Endicott is all well enough!” said Rose; “only, you observe,
not precisely to me what you were to the lady you call Polly,—that’s
all.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Van Astrachan. “Well, to be sure, that does make
a difference; but Harry’s a nice fellow, nice fellow, Miss Rose: not
many fellows like him, as I think.”
“Yes, indeed,” chimed in Mrs. Van Astrachan. “I haven’t a son in the
world that I think more of than I do of Harry; he has such a good
heart.”
Now, the fact was, this eulogistic strain that the worthy couple were
very prone to fall into in speaking of Harry to Rose was this morning
most especially annoying to her; and she turned the subject at once, by
chattering so fluently, and with such minute details of description,
about the arrangements of the rooms and the flowers and the lamps and
the fountains and the cascades, and all the fairy-land wonders of the
Follingsbee party, that the good pair found themselves constrained to
be listeners during the rest of the time devoted to the morning meal.
It will be found that good young ladies, while of course they have all
the innocence of the dove, do display upon emergencies a considerable
share of the wisdom of the serpent. And on this same mother wit and
wisdom, Rose called internally, when that day, about eleven o’clock,
she was summoned to the library, to give Harry his audience.
Truth to say, she was in a state of excited womanhood vastly becoming
to her general appearance, and entered the library with flushed cheeks
and head erect, like one prepared to stand for herself and for her sex.
Harry, however, wore a mortified, semi-penitential air, that, on
the first glance, rather mollified her. Still, however, she was not
sufficiently clement to give him the least assistance in opening the
conversation, by the suggestions of any of those nice little oily
nothings with which ladies, when in a gracious mood, can smooth the
path for a difficult confession.
She sat very quietly, with her hands before her, while Harry walked
tumultuously up and down the room.
“Miss Ferguson,” he said at last, abruptly, “I know you are thinking
ill of me.”
Miss Ferguson did not reply.
“I had hoped,” he said, “that there had been a little something more
than mere acquaintance between us. I had hoped you looked upon me as a
friend.”
“I did, Mr. Endicott,” said Rose.
“And you do not now?”
“I cannot say that,” she said, after a pause; “but, Mr. Endicott, if we
are friends, you must give me the liberty to speak plainly.”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do!” he said impetuously; “that is
just what I wish.”
“Allow me to ask, then, if you are an early friend, and family
connection of Mrs. John Seymour?”
“I was an early friend, and am somewhat of a family connection.”
“That is, I understand there has been a ground in your past history for
you to be on a footing of a certain family intimacy with Mrs. Seymour;
in that case, Mr. Endicott, I think you ought to have considered
yourself the guardian of her honor and reputation, and not allowed her
to be compromised on your account.”
The blood flushed into Harry’s face; and he stood abashed and silent.
Rose went on,—
“I was shocked, I was astonished, last night, because I could not help
overhearing the most disagreeable, the most painful remarks on you and
her,—remarks most unjust, I am quite sure, but for which I fear you
have given too much reason!”
“Miss Ferguson,” said Harry, stopping as he walked up and down, “I
confess I have been wrong and done wrong; but, if you knew all, you
might see how I have been led into it. That woman has been the evil
fate of my life. Years ago, when we were both young, I loved her as
honestly as man could love a woman; and she professed to love me in
return. But I was poor; and she would not marry me. She sent me off,
yet she would not let me forget her. She would always write to me just
enough to keep up hope and interest; and she knew for years that all my
object in striving for fortune was to win her. At last, when a lucky
stroke made me suddenly rich, and I came home to seek her, I found her
married,—married, as she owns, without love,—married for wealth and
ambition. I don’t justify myself,—I don’t pretend to; but when she met
me with her old smiles and her old charms, and told me she loved me
still, it roused the very devil in me. I wanted revenge. I wanted to
humble her, and make her suffer all she had made me; and I didn’t care
what came of it.”
Harry spoke, trembling with emotion; and Rose felt almost terrified
with the storm she had raised.
“O Mr. Endicott!” she said, “was this worthy of you? was there nothing
better, higher, more manly than this poor revenge? You men are
stronger than we: you have the world in your hands; you have a thousand
resources where we have only one. And you ought to be stronger and
nobler according to your advantages; you ought to rise superior to the
temptations that beset a poor, weak, ill-educated woman, whom everybody
has been flattering from her cradle, and whom you, I dare say, have
helped to flatter, turning her head with compliments, like all the rest
of them. Come, now, is not there something in that?”
“Well, I suppose,” said Harry, “that when Lillie and I were girl and
boy together, I did flatter her, sincerely that is. Her beauty made a
fool of me; and I helped make a fool of her.”
“And I dare say,” said Rose, “you told her that all she was made for
was to be charming, and encouraged her to live the life of a butterfly
or canary-bird. Did you ever try to strengthen her principles, to
educate her mind, to make her strong? On the contrary, haven’t you been
bowing down and adoring her for being weak? It seems to me that Lillie
is exactly the kind of woman that you men educate, by the way you look
on women, and the way you treat them.”
Harry sat in silence, ruminating.
“Now,” said Rose, “it seems to me it’s the most cowardly and unmanly
thing in the world for men, with every advantage in their hands, with
all the strength that their kind of education gives them, with all
their opportunities,—a thousand to our one,—to hunt down these poor
little silly women, whom society keeps stunted and dwarfed for their
special amusement.”
“Miss Ferguson, you are very severe,” said Harry, his face flushing.
“Well,” said Rose, “you have this advantage, Mr. Endicott: you know, if
I am, the world will not be. Everybody will take your part; everybody
will smile on you, and condemn her. That is generous, is it not? I
think, after all, Noah Claypole isn’t so very uncommon a picture of the
way that your lordly sex turn round and cast all the blame on ours.
You will never make me believe in a protracted flirtation between a
gentleman and lady, where at least half the blame does not lie on
his lordship’s side. I always said that a woman had no need to have
offers made her by a man she could not love, if she conducted herself
properly; and I think the same is true in regard to men. But then, as I
said before, you have the world on your side; nine persons out of ten
see no possible harm in a man’s taking every advantage of a woman, if
she will let him.”
“But I care more for the opinion of the tenth person than of the nine,”
said Harry; “I care more for what you think than any of them. Your
words are severe; but I think they are just.”
“O Mr. Endicott!” said Rose, “live for something higher than for what
I think,—than for what any one thinks. Think how many glorious chances
there are for a noble career for a young man with your fortune, with
your leisure, with your influence! is it for you to waste life in this
unworthy way? If I had your chances, I would try to do something worth
doing.”
Rose’s face kindled with enthusiasm; and Harry looked at her with
admiration.
“Tell me what I ought to do!” he said.
“I cannot tell you,” said Rose; “but where there is a will there is
a way: and, if you have the will, you will find the way. But, first,
you must try and repair the mischief you have done to Lillie. By your
own account of the matter, you have been encouraging and keeping up a
sort of silly, romantic excitement in her. It is worse than silly; it
is sinful. It is trifling with her best interests in this life and the
life to come. And I think you must know that, if you had treated her
like an honest, plain-spoken brother or cousin, without any trumpery of
gallantry or sentiment, things would have never got to be as they are.
You could have prevented all this; and you can put an end to it now.”
“Honestly, I will try,” said Harry. “I will begin, by confessing my
faults like a good boy, and take the blame on myself where it belongs,
and try to make Lillie see things like a good girl. But she is in bad
surroundings; and, if I were her husband, I wouldn’t let her stay there
another day. There are no morals in that circle; it’s all a perfect
crush of decaying garbage.”
“I think,” said Rose, “that, if this thing goes no farther, it will
gradually die out even in that circle; and, in the better circles of
New York, I trust it will not be heard of. Mrs. Van Astrachan and I
will appear publicly with Lillie; and if she is seen with us, and at
this house, it will be sufficient to contradict a dozen slanders.
She has the noblest, kindest husband,—one of the best men and truest
gentlemen I ever knew.”
“I pity him then,” said Harry.
“He is to be pitied,” said Rose; “but his work is before him. This
woman, such as she is, with all her faults, he has taken for better or
for worse; and all true friends and good people, both his and hers,
should help both sides to make the best of it.”
“I should say,” said Harry, “that there is in this no best side.”
“I think you do Lillie injustice,” said Rose. “There is, and must be,
good in every one; and gradually the good in him will overcome the evil
in her.”
“Let us hope so,” said Harry. “And now, Miss Ferguson, may I hope that
you won’t quite cross my name out of your good book? You’ll be friends
with me, won’t you?”
“Oh, certainly!” said Rose, with a frank smile.
“Well, let’s shake hands on that,” said Harry, rising to go.
Rose gave him her hand, and the two parted in all amity.