"I am sorry, very sorry," said Belle Gordon, as a shadow of deep
distress flitted over her pale sad face. She was usually cheerful and
serene in her manner; but now it seemed as if the very depths of her
soul had been stirred by some mournful and bitter memory. "Your question
was so unexpected and--"
"And what!" said Paul in a tone of sad expectancy, "so unwelcome?"
"It was so sudden, I was not prepared for it."
"I do not," said Paul, "ask an immediate reply. Give yourself ample time
for consideration."
"Mr. Clifford," said Belle, her voice gathering firmness as she
proceeded, "while all the relations of life demand that there should be
entire truthfulness between us and our fellow creatures, I think we
should be especially sincere and candid in our dealings with each other
on this question of marriage, a question not only as affecting our own
welfare but that of[5] others, a relation which may throw its sunshine
or shadow over the track of unborn ages. Permit me now to say to you,
that there is no gentleman of my acquaintance whom I esteem more highly
than yourself; but when you ask me for my heart and hand, I almost feel
as if I had no heart to give; and you know it would be wrong to give my
hand where I could not place my heart."
"But would it be impossible for you to return my affection?" "I don't
know, but I am only living out my [vow] of truthfulness when I say to
you, I feel as if I had been undone for love. You tell that in offering
your hand that you bring me a heart unhackneyed in the arts of love,
that my heart is the first and only shrine on which you have ever laid
the wealth of your affections. I cannot say the same in reply. I have
had my bright and beautiful day dream, but it has faded, and I have
learned what is the hardest of all lessons for a woman to learn. I have
learned to live without love."
"Oh no," said Paul, "not to live without love. In darkened homes how
many grateful hearts rejoice to hear your footsteps on the threshold. I
have seen the eyes of young Arabs of the street grow brighter as you
approached and say, 'That's my lady, she comes to see my mam when she's
sick.' And I have seen little girls in the street quicken their face to
catch a loving smile from their dear Sunday school teacher. Oh Miss
Belle instead of living without love, I think you are surrounded with a
cordon of loving hearts."
"Yes, and I appreciate them--but this is not the love to which I refer.
I mean a love which is mine, as anything else on earth is mine, a love
precious, enduring and strong, which brings hope and joy and sunshine
over one's path in life. A love which commands my allegiance and demands
my respect. This is the love I have learned to do without, and perhaps
the poor and needy had learned to love me less, had this love surrounded
me more."
"Miss Belle, perhaps I was presumptuous, to have asked a return of the
earnest affection I have for you; but I had hoped that you would give
the question some consideration; and may I not hope that you will think
kindly of my proposal? Oh Miss Gordon, ever since the death of my
sainted mother, I have had in my mind's eye the ideal of a woman nobly
planned, beautiful, intellectual, true and affectionate, and you have
filled out that ideal in all its loveliest proportions, and I hope that
my desire will not be like reaching out to some bright particular star
and wishing to win it. It seems to me," he said with increasing
earnestness, "whatever obstacle may be in the way, I would go through
fire and water to remove it."
"I am sorry," said Belle as if speaking to herself, and her face had an
absent look about it, as if instead of being interested in the living
present she was grouping amid the ashes of the dead past. At length she
said, "Mr. Clifford, permit me to say in the first place, let there be
truth between us. If my heart seems callous and indifferent to your
love, believe me it is warm to esteem and value you as a friend, I might
almost say as a brother, for in sympathy of feeling and congeniality of
disposition you are nearer to me than my own brother; but I do not think
were I so inclined that it would be advisable for me to accept your hand
without letting you know something of my past history. I told you a few
moments since that I had my day dream. Permit me to tell you, for I
think you are entitled to my confidence. The object of that day dream
was Charles Romaine."
"Charles Romaine!" and there was a tone of wonder in the voice, and a
puzzled look on the face of Paul Clifford.
"Yes! Charles Romaine, not as you know him now, with the marks of
dissipation on his once handsome face, but Charles Romaine, as I knew
him when he stood upon the threshold of early manhood, the very
incarnation of beauty, strength and grace. Not Charles Romaine with the
blurred and bloated countenance, the staggering gait, the confused and
vacant eye; but Charles Romaine as a young, handsome and talented
lawyer, the pride of our village, the hope of his father and the joy of
his mother; before whom the future was opening full of rich and rare
promises. Need I tell you that when he sought my hand in preference to
all the other girls in our village, that I gave him what I never can
give to another, the first, deep love of my girlish heart. For nearly a
whole year I wore his betrothal ring upon my finger, when I saw to my
utter anguish and dismay that he was fast becoming a drunkard. Oh! Mr.
Clifford if I could have saved him I would have taken blood from every
vein and strength from every nerve. We met frequently at entertainments.
I noticed time after time, the effects of the wine he had imbibed, upon
his manner and conversation. At first I shrank from remonstrating with
him, until the burden lay so heavy on my heart that I felt I must speak
out, let the consequences be what they might. And so one evening I told
him plainly and seriously my fears about his future. He laughed lightly
and said my fears were unfounded; that I was nervous and giving away to
idle fancies; that his father always had wine at the table, and that he
had never seen him under the influence of liquor. Silenced, but not
convinced, I watched his course with painful solicitude. All
remonstrances on my part seemed thrown away; he always had the precedent
of his father to plead in reply to my earnest entreaties. At last when
remonstrances and entreaties seemed to be all in vain, I resolved to
break the engagement. It may have been a harsh and hard alternative, but
I would not give my hand where my respect could not follow. It may be
that I thought too much of my own happiness, but I felt that marriage
must be for me positive misery or positive happiness, and I feared that
if I married a man so lacking in self-control as to become a common
drunkard, that when I ceased to love and respect him, I should be
constantly tempted to hate and despise him. I think one of the saddest
fates that can befall a woman is to be tied for life to a miserable
bloated wreck of humanity. There may be some women with broad generous
hearts, and great charity, strong enough to lift such men out of the
depths, but I had no such faith in my strength and so I gave him back
his ring. He accepted it, but we parted as friends. For awhile after our
engagement was broken, we occasionally met at the houses of our mutual
friends in social gatherings and I noticed with intense satisfaction
that whenever wine was offered he scrupulously abstained from ever
tasting a drop, though I think at times his self-control was severely
tested. Oh! what hope revived in my heart. Here I said to myself is
compensation for all I have suffered, if by it he shall be restored to
manhood usefulness and society, and learn to make his life not a thing
of careless ease and sensuous indulgence, but of noble struggle and high
and holy endeavor. But while I was picturing out for him a magnificent
future, imagining the lofty triumphs of his intellect--an intellect
grand in its achievements and glorious in its possibilities, my
beautiful daydream was rudely broken up, and vanished away like the rays
of sunset mingling with the shadows of night. My Aunt Mrs. Roland,
celebrated her silver-wedding and my cousin's birth-day by giving a
large entertainment; and among other things she had a plentiful supply
of wine. Mr. Romaine had lately made the acquaintance of my cousin
Jeanette Roland. She was both beautiful in person and fascinating in her
manners, and thoughtlessly she held a glass of wine in her hand and
asked Mr. Romaine if he would not honor the occasion, by drinking her
mother's health. For a moment he hesitated, his cheek paled and flushed
alternately, he looked irresolute. While I watched him in silent anguish
it seemed as if the agony of years was compressed in a few moments. I
tried to catch his eye but failed, and with a slight tremor in his hand
he lifted the glass to his lips and drank. I do not think I would have
felt greater anguish had I seen him suddenly drowned in sight of land.
Oh! Mr. Clifford that night comes before me so vividly, it seems as if I
am living it all over again. I do not think Mr. Romaine has ever
recovered from the reawakening of his appetite. He has since married
Jeanette. I meet her occasionally. She has a beautiful home, dresses
magnificently, and has a retinue of servants; and yet I fancy she is not
happy. That somewhere hidden out of sight there is a worm eating at the
core of her life. She has a way of dropping her eyes and an absent look
about her that I do not fully understand, but it seems to me that I miss
the old elasticity of her spirits, the merry ring of her voice, the
pleasant thrills of girlish laughter, and though she never confesses it
to me I doubt that Jeanette is happy. And with this sad experience in
the past can you blame me if I am slow, very slow to let the broken
tendrils of my heart entwine again?"
"Miss Belle," said Paul Clifford catching eagerly at the smallest straw
of hope, "if you can not give me the first love of a fresh young life, I
am content with the rich [aftermath?] of your maturer years, and ask
from life no higher prize; may I not hope for that?"
"I will think on it but for the present let us change the subject."
* * * * *
"Do you think Jeanette is happy? She seems so different from what she
used to be," said Miss Tabitha Jones to several friends who were
spending the evening with her.
"Happy!" replied Mary Gladstone, "don't see what's to hinder her from
being happy. She has everything that heart can wish. I was down to her
house yesterday, and she has just moved in her new home. It has all the
modern improvements, and everything is in excellent taste. Her furniture
is of the latest style, and I think it is really superb."
"Yes," said her sister, "and she dresses magnificently. Last week she
showed me a most beautiful set of jewelry, and a camel's hair shawl, and
I believe it is real camel's hair. I think you could almost run it
through a ring. If I had all she has, I think I should be as happy as
the days are long. I don't believe I would let a wave of trouble roll
across my peaceful breast."
"Oh! Annette," said Mrs. Gladstone, "don't speak so extravagantly, and I
don't like to hear you quote those lines for such an occasion."
"Why not mother? Where's the harm?"
"That hymn has been associated in my mind with my earliest religious
impressions and experience, and I don't like to see you lift it out of
its sacred associations, for such a trifling occasion."
"Oh mother you are so strict. I shall never be able to keep time with
you, but I do think, if I was off as Jeanette, that I would be as blithe
and happy as a lark, and instead of that she seems to be constantly
drooping and fading."
"Annette," said Mrs. Gladstone, "I knew a woman who possesses more than
Jeanette does, and yet she died of starvation."
"Died of starvation! Why, when, and where did that happen? and what
became of her husband?"
"He is in society, caressed and [ ed?] on by the young girls of his set
and I have seen a number of managing mammas to whom I have imagined he
would not be an objectionable son-in-law."
"Do I know him mother?"
"No! and I hope you never will."
"Well mother I would like to know how he starved his wife to death and
yet escaped the law."
"The law helped him."
"Oh mother!" said both girls opening their eyes in genuine astonishment.
"I thought," said Mary Gladstone, "it was the province of the law to
protect women, I was just telling Miss Basanquet yesterday, when she
was talking about woman's suffrage that I had as many rights as I wanted
and that I was willing to let my father and brothers do all the voting
for me."
"Forgetting my dear, that there are millions of women who haven't such
fathers and brothers as you have. No my dear, when you examine the
matter, a little more closely, you will find there are some painful
inequalities in the law for women."
"But mother, I do think it would be a dreadful thing for women to vote
Oh! just think of women being hustled and crowded at the polls by rude
men, their breaths reeking with whiskey and tobacco, the very air heavy
with their oaths. And then they have the polls at public houses. Oh
mother, I never want to see the day when women vote."
"Well I do, because we have one of the kindest and best fathers and
husbands and good brothers, who would not permit the winds of heaven to
visit us too roughly, there is no reason we should throw ourselves
between the sunshine and our less fortunate sisters who shiver in the
blast."
"But mother, I don't see how voting would help us, I am sure we have
influence I have often heard papa say that you were the first to awaken
him to a sense of the enormity of slavery. Now mother if we women would
use our influence with our fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, could
we not have everything we want."
"No, my dear we could not, with all our influence we never could have
the same sense of responsibility which flows from the possession of
power. I want women to possess power as well as influence, I want every
Christian woman as she passes by a grogshop or liquor saloon, to feel
that she has on her heart a burden of responsibility for its existence,
I hold my dear that a nation as well as an individual should have a
conscience, and on this liquor question there is room for woman's
conscience not merely as a persuasive influence but as an enlightened
and aggressive power."
"Well Ma I think you would make a first class stump speaker. I expect
when women vote we shall be constantly having calls, for the gifted, and
talented Mrs. Gladstone to speak on the duties and perils of the hour."
"And I would do it, I would go among my sister women and try to persuade
them to use their vote as a moral lever, not to make home less happy,
but society more holy. I would have good and sensible women, grave in
manner, and cultured in intellect, attend the primary meetings and bring
their moral influence and political power to frown down corruption,
chicanery, and low cunning."
"But mother just think if women went to the polls how many vicious ones
would go?"
"I hope and believe for the honor of our sex that the vicious women of
the community are never in the majority, that for one woman whose feet
turn aside from the paths of rectitude that there are thousands of feet
that never stray into forbidden paths, and today I believe there is
virtue enough in society to confront its vice, and intelligence enough
to grapple with its ignorance."[6]