over the future, the far greater joy of being his wife. Was not this high
hope in love, this confidence in the promises of marriage, out of place
in Bessie? She has daily before her, in the mutual sayings and doings of
her grandfather and his spouse, a woful instance of the jarring way in
which the chariot-wheels of wedlock may run. Squire Tom Lauson does not
get on angelically with his second wife. It is reported that she finds
existence with him the greatest burden that she has ever yet borne,
and that she testifies to her disgust with it in a fashion which is at
times startlingly dramatic. If we arrive at the Lauson house on the day
following the dialogue which has been reported, we shall witness one of
her most effective exhibitions.
It is raining violently; an old-fashioned blue-light Puritan
thunder-storm is raging over the Barham hills; the blinding flashes
are instantaneously followed by the deafening peals; the air is full
of sublime terror and danger. But to Mrs. Squire Lauson the tempest is
so far from horrible that it is even welcome, friendly, and alluring,
compared with her daily showers of conjugal misery. She has just
finished one of those frequent contests with her husband, which her
sickly petulance perpetually forces her to seek, and which nevertheless
drive her frantic. In her wild, yet weak rage and misery, death seems a
desirable refuge. Out of the open front door she rushes, out into the
driving rain and blinding lightning, lifts her hands passionately toward
Heaven, and prays for a flash to strike her dead.
After twice shrieking this horrible supplication, she dropped her arms
with a gesture of sullen despair, and stalked slowly, reeking wet,
into the house. In the hall, looking out upon this scene of demoniacal
possession, sat Bessie Lauson and her maiden aunt, Miss Mercy Lauson,
while behind them, coming from an inner room, appeared the burly figure
of the old Squire. As Mrs. Lauson passed the two women, they drew a
little aside with a sort of shrinking which arose partly from a desire to
avoid her dripping garments, and partly from that awe with which most of
us regard ungovernable passion. The Squire, on the contrary, met his wife
with a sarcastic twinkle of his grim gray eyes, and a scoff which had the
humor discoverable in the contrast between total indifference and furious
emotion.
“Closed your camp-meeting early, Mrs. Lauson,” said the old man; “can’t
expect a streak of lightning for such a short service.”
A tormentor who wears a smile inflicts a double agony. Mrs. Lauson wrung
her hands, and broke out in a cry of rage and anguish: “O Lord, let it
strike me! O Lord, let it strike me!”
Squire Lauson took a chair, crossed his thick, muscular legs, glanced at
his wife, glanced at the levin-seamed sky, and remarked with a chuckle,
“I’m waiting to see this thing out.”
“Father, I say it’s perfectly awful,” remonstrated Miss Mercy Lauson.
“Mother, ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”
Miss Mercy was an old maid of the grave, sad, sickly New England type.
She pronounced her reproof in a high, thin, passionless monotone, without
a gesture or a flash of expression, without glancing at the persons whom
she addressed, looking straight before her at the wall. She seemed to
speak without emotion, and merely from a stony sense of duty. It was as
if a message had been delivered by the mouth of an automaton.
Both the Squire and his wife made some response, but a prolonged crash of
thunder drowned the feeble blasphemy of their voices, and the moving of
their lips was like a mockery of life, as if the lips of corpses had been
stirred by galvanism. Then, as if impatient of hearing both man and God,
Mrs. Lauson clasped her hands over her ears, and fled away to some inner
room of the shaking old house, seeking perhaps the little pity that there
is for the wretched in solitude. The Squire remained seated, his gray
and horny fingers drumming on the arms of the chair, and his faded lips
murmuring some inaudible conversation.
For the wretchedness of Mrs. Lauson there was partial cause in the
disposition and ways of her husband. Very odd was the old Squire;
violently combative could he be in case of provocation; and to those who
resisted what he called his rightful authority he was a tyrant.
Having lost the wife whom he had ruled for so many years, and having
enjoyed the serene but lonely empire of widowhood for eighteen months,
he felt the need of some one for some purpose,—perhaps to govern.
Once resolved on a fresh spouse, he set about searching for one in a
clear-headed and business-like manner, as if it had been a question of
getting a family horse.
The woman whom he finally received into his flinty bosom was a maiden
of forty-five, who had known in her youth the uneasy joys of many
flirtations, and who had marched through various successes (the
triumphs of a small university town) to sit down at last in a life-long
disappointment. Regretting her past, dissatisfied with every present,
demanding improbabilities of the future, eager still to be flattered
and worshipped and obeyed, she was wofully unfitted for marriage with
an old man of plain habits and retired life, who was quite as egoistic
as herself and far more combative and domineering. It was soon a
horrible thing to remember the young lovers who had gone long ago, but
who, it seemed to her, still adored her, and to compare them with this
unsympathizing master, who gave her no courtship nor tender reverence,
and who spoke but to demand submission.
“In a general way,” says a devout old lady of my acquaintance, “Divine
Providence blesses second marriages.”
With no experience of my own in this line, and with not a large
observation of the experience of others, I am nevertheless inclined to
admit that my friend has the right of it. Conceding the fact that second
marriages are usually happy, one naturally asks, Why is it? Is it because
a man knows better how to select a second wife? or because he knows
better how to treat her? Well disposed toward both these suppositions, I
attach the most importance to the latter.
No doubt Benedict chooses more thoughtfully when he chooses a second
time; no doubt he is governed more by judgment than in his first
courtship, and less by blind impulse; no doubt he has learned some
love-making wisdom from experience. A woman who will be patient with
him, a woman who will care well for his household affairs and for his
children, a woman who will run steadily rather than showily in the
domestic harness,—that is what he usually wants when he goes sparking at
forty or fifty.
But this is not all and not even the half of the explanation. He has
acquired a knowledge of what woman is, and a knowledge of what may fairly
be required of her. He has learned to put himself in her place; to
grant her the sympathy which her sensitive heart needs; to estimate the
sufferings which arise from her variable health; in short, he has learned
to be thoughtful and patient and merciful. Moreover, he is apt to select
some one who, like himself, has learned command of temper and moderation
of expectation from the lessons of life. As he knows that a glorified
wife is impossible here below, so she makes no strenuous demand for an
angel husband.
But Squire Thomas Lauson had married an old maid who had not yet given
up the struggle to be a girl, and who, in consequence of a long and
silly bellehood, could not put up with any form of existence which was
not a continual courtship. Furthermore, he himself was not a persimmon;
he had not gathered sweetness from the years which frosted his brow. An
interestingly obdurate block of the Puritan granite of New England, he
was almost as self-opinionated, domineering, pugnacious, and sarcastic as
he had been at fifteen. He still had overmuch of the unripe spirit which
plagues little boys, scoffs at girls, stones frogs, drowns kittens, and
mutters domestic defiances. If Mrs. Lauson was skittish and fractious, he
was her full match as a wife-breaker.
In short, the Squire had not chosen wisely; he was not fitted to win
a woman’s heart by sympathy and justice; and thus Providence had not
blessed his second marriage.
We must return now to Miss Mercy Lauson and her niece Bessie. They are
alone once more, for Squire Lauson has finished his sarcastic mutterings,
and has stumped away to some other dungeon of the unhappy old house.
“You _see_, Bessie!” said Miss Mercy, after a pinching of her thin lips
which was like the biting of forceps,—“you _see_ how married people can
live with each other. Bickerings an’ strife! bickerings an’ strife! But
for all that you mean to marry Henry Foster.”
We must warn the reader not to expect vastness of thought or eloquence of
speech from Miss Mercy. Her narrow-shouldered, hollow-chested soul could
not grasp ideas of much moment, nor handle such as she was able to grasp
with any vigor or grace.
“I should like to know,” returned Bessie with spirit, “if I am not likely
to have my share of bickerings and strife, if I stay here and don’t get
married.”
“That depends upon how far you control your temper, Elizabeth.”
“And so it does in marriage, I suppose.”
Miss Mercy found herself involved in an argument, when she had simply
intended to play the part of a preacher in his pulpit, warning and
reproving without being answered. She accepted the challenge in a tone
of iced pugnacity, which indicated in part a certain imperfect habit of
self-control, and in part the unrestrainable peevishness of a chronic
invalid.
“I don’t say folks will necessarily be unhappy in merridge,” she went
on. “Merridge is a Divine ord’nance, an’ I’m obleeged to respect it
as such. I do, I suppose, respect it more ’n some who’ve entered into
it. But merridge, to obtain the Divine blessing, must not be a yoking
with unbelievers. There’s the trouble with father’s wife; she ain’t a
professor. There, too, ’s the trouble with Henry Foster; he’s not one of
those who’ve chosen the better part. I want you to think it all over in
soberness of sperrit, Elizabeth.”
“It is the only thing you know against him,” replied the girl, flushing
with the anger of outraged affection.
“No, it ain’t. He’s brung home strange ways from abroad. He smokes an’
drinks beer an’ plays cards; an’ his form seldom darkens the threshold
of the sanctuary. Elizabeth, I must be plain with you on this vital
subject. I’m going to be as plain with you as your own conscience ought
to be. I see it’s no use talking to you ’bout duty an’ the life to come.
I must—there’s no sort of doubt about it—I _must_ bring the things of
this world to bear on you. You know I’ve made my will: I’ve left every
cent of my property to you,—twenty thousand dollars! Well, if you enter
into merridge with that young man, I shall alter it. I ain’t going to
have my money,—the money that my poor God-fearing aunt left me,—I ain’t
going to have it fooled away on card-players an’ scorners. Now there it
is, Elizabeth. There’s what my duty tells me to do, an’ what I shall do.
Ponder it well an’ take your choice.”
“I don’t care,” burst forth Bessie, springing to her feet. “I shall tell
_him_, and if it makes no difference to _him_, it will make none to _me_.”
Here a creak in the floor caught her ear, and turning quickly she
discovered Henry Foster. Entering the house by a side door, and coming
through a short lateral passage to the front hall, he had reached it in
time to hear the close of the conversation and catch its entire drift.
You could see in his face that he had heard thus much, for healthy,
generous, kindly, and cheerful as the face usually was, it wore now a
confused and pained expression.
“I beg pardon for disturbing you,” he said. “I was pelted into the house
to get out of the shower, and I took the shortest cut.”
Bessie’s Oriental visage flushed to a splendid crimson, and a whiter
ashiness stole into the sallow cheek of Aunt Mercy. The girl, quick and
adroit as most women are in leaping out of embarrassments, rushed into a
strain of light conversation. How wet Professor Foster was, and wouldn’t
he go and dry himself? What a storm it had been, and what wonderful,
dreadful thunder and lightning; and how glad she was that he had come,
for it seemed as if he were some protection.
“There’s only One who can protect us,” murmured Aunt Mercy, “either in
such seasons or any others.”
“His natural laws are our proper recourse,” respectfully replied Foster,
who was religious too, in his scientific fashion.
Bessie cringed with alarm; here was an insinuated attack on her aunt’s
favorite dogma of special providences; the subject must be pitched
overboard at once.
“What is the news in Hampstead?” she asked. “Has the town gone to sleep,
as Barham has? You ought to wake us up with something amusing.”
“Jennie Brown is engaged,” said Foster. “Isn’t that satisfactory?”
“O dear! how many times does that make?” laughed Bessie. “Is it a student
again?”
“Yes, it is a student.”
“You ought to make it a college offence for students to engage
themselves,” continued Bessie. “You know that they can hardly ever marry,
and generally break the girls’ hearts.”
“Have they broken Jennie Brown’s? She doesn’t believe it, nor her
present young man either. I’ve no doubt he thinks her as good as new.”
“I dare say. But such things hurt girls in general, and you professors
ought to see to it, and I want to know why you don’t. But is that all the
news? That’s such a small matter! such an old sort of thing! If I had
come from Hampstead, I would have brought more than that.”
So Bessie rattled on, partly because she loved to talk to this admirable
Professor, but mainly to put off the crisis which she saw was coming.
But it was vain to hope for clemency, or even for much delay, from Aunt
Mercy. Grim, unhappy, peevish as many invalids are, and impelled by a
remorseless conscience, she was not to be diverted from finishing with
Foster the horrid bone which she had commenced to pick with Bessie. You
could see in her face what kind of thoughts and purposes were in her
heart. She was used to quarrelling; or, to speak more strictly, she was
used to entertaining hard feelings towards others; but she had never
learned to express her bitter sentiments frankly. Unable to destroy
them, she had felt herself bound in general not to utter them, and
this non-utterance had grown to be one of her despotic and distressing
“duties.” Nothing could break through her shyness, her reserve, her habit
of silence, but an emotion which amounted to passion; and such an emotion
she was not only unable to conceal, but she was also unable to exhibit
it either nobly or gracefully: it shone all through her, and it made her
seem spiteful.
As she was about to speak, however, a glance at Bessie’s anxious face
checked her. After her painful, severe fashion, she really loved the
girl, and she did not want to load her with any more sorrow than was
strictly necessary. Moreover, the surely worthy thought occurred to her
that Heaven might favor one last effort to convert this wrong-minded
young man into one who could be safely intrusted with the welfare of
her niece and the management of her money. Hailing the suggestion, in
accordance with her usual exaltation of faith, as an indication from the
sublimest of all authority, she entered upon her task with such power as
nature had given her and such sweetness as a shattered nervous system had
left her.
“Mr. Foster, there’s one thing I greatly desire to see,” she began
in a hurried, tremulous tone. “I want you to come out from among the
indifferent, an’ join yourself to _us_. Why don’t you do it? Why don’t
you become a professor?”
Foster was even more surprised and dismayed than most men are when thus
addressed. Here was an appeal such as all of us must listen to with
respect, not only because it represents the opinions of a vast and justly
revered portion of civilized humanity, but because it concerns the
highest mysteries and possibilities of which humanity is cognizant. As
one who valued himself on being both a philosopher and a gentleman, he
would have felt bound to treat any one courteously who thus approached
him. But there was more; this appeal evidently alluded to his intentions
of marriage; it was connected with the threat of disinheritance which he
had overheard on entering the house. If he would promise to “join the
church,” if he would even only appear to take the step into favorable
consideration, he could remove the objections of this earnest woman to
his betrothal, and secure her property to his future wife. But Foster
could not do what policy demanded; he had his “honest doubts,” and he
could not remove them by an exercise of will; moreover, he was too
self-respectful and honorable to be a hypocrite. After pondering Aunt
Mercy’s question for a moment, he answered with a dignity of soul which
was not appreciated,—
“I should have no objection to what you propose, if it would not be
misunderstood. If it would only mean that I believe in God, and that
I worship his power and goodness, I would oblige you. But it would be
received as meaning more,—as meaning that I accept doctrines which I am
still examining,—as meaning that I take upon myself obligations which I
do not yet hold binding.”
“Don’t you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?” demanded
Miss Mercy, striking home with telling directness.
“I believe in a Deity who views his whole universe with equal love. I
believe in a Deity greater than I always hear preached.”
Miss Mercy was puzzled; for while this confession of faith did not quite
tally with what she was accustomed to receive from pulpits, there was
about it a largeness of religious perception which slightly excited her
awe. Nevertheless, it showed a dangerous vagueness, and she decided to
demand something more explicit.
“What are your opinions on the inspiration of the Scriptures?” she asked.
He had been reading Colenso’s work on Genesis; and, so far as he could
judge the Bishop’s premises, he agreed with his conclusions. At the same
time he was aware that such an exegesis would seem simple heresy to Miss
Mercy, and that whoever held it would be condemned by her as a heathen
and an infidel. After a moment of hesitation, he responded bravely and
honestly, though with a placating smile.
“Miss Lauson, there are some subjects, indeed there are many subjects,
on which I have no fixed opinions. I used to have opinions on almost
everything; but I found them very troublesome, I had to change them so
often! I have decided not to declare any more positive opinions, but only
to entertain suppositions to the effect that this or that may be the
case; meantime holding myself ready to change my hypotheses on further
evidence.”
Although he seemed to her guilty of shuffling away from her question, yet
she, in the main, comprehended his reply distinctly enough. He did not
believe in plenary inspiration; that was clear, and so also was her duty
clear; she must not let him have her niece nor her money.
Now there was a something in her face like the forming of columns for
an assault, or rather like the irrational, ungovernable gathering of
clouds for a storm. Her staid, melancholy soul—a soul which usually lay
in chains and solitary—climbed writhing to her lips and eyes, and made
angry gestures before it spoke. Bessie stared at her in alarm; she tried,
in a spirit of youthful energy, to look her down; but the struggle of
prevention was useless; the hostile words came.
“Mr. Foster, I can’t willingly give my niece to such an one as you,” she
said in a tremulous but desperate monotone. “I s’pose, though, it’s no
use forbidding you to go with her. I s’pose you wouldn’t mind that. But I
expect you _will_ care for one thing,—for her good. My will is made now
in her favor. But if she marries you I shall change it. I sha’n’t leave
her a cent.”
Here her sickly strength broke down; such plain utterance of feeling and
purpose was too much for her nerves; she burst into honest, bitter tears,
and, rushing to her room, locked herself up; no doubt, too, she prayed
there long, and read solemnly in the Scriptures.
What was the result of this conscientious but no doubt unwise
remonstrance? After a shock of disagreeable surprise, the two lovers
did what all true lovers would have done; they entered into a solemn
engagement that no considerations of fortune should prevent their
marriage. They shut their eyes on the future, braved all the adverse
chances of life, and almost prayed for trials in order that each
might show the other greater devotion. The feeling was natural and
ungovernable, and I claim also that it was beautiful and noble.
“Do you know all?” asked Bessie. “Grandfather has never proposed to leave
me anything, he hated my father so! It was always understood that Aunt
Mercy was to take care of me.”
“I want nothing with you,” said Foster. “I will slave myself to death for
you. I will rejoice to do it.”
“O, I knew it would be so!” replied the girl, almost faint with joy and
love. “I knew you would be true to me. I knew how grand you were.”
When they looked out upon the earth, after this scene, during which they
had been conscious of nothing but each other, the storm had fled beyond
verdant hills, and a rainbow spanned all the visible landscape, seeming
to them indeed a bow of promise.
“O, we can surely be happy in such a world as this!” said Bessie, her
face colored and illuminated by youth, hope, and love.
“We will find a cloud castle somewhere,” responded the young man,
pointing to the western sky, piled with purple and crimson.
Bessie was about to accompany him to the gate on his departure, as was
her simple and affectionate custom, when a voice called her up stairs.
“O dear!” she exclaimed, pettishly. “It seems as if I couldn’t have a
moment’s peace. Good by, my darling.”
During the close of that day, at the hour which in Barham was known
as “early candle-lighting,” the Lauson tragedy began to take form.
The mysterious shadow which vaguely announced its on-coming was the
disappearance from the family ken of that lighthouse of regularity, that
fast-rooted monument of strict habit, Aunt Mercy. The kerosene lamp
which had so long beamed upon her darnings and mendings, or upon her
more æsthetic labors in behalf of the Barham sewing society, or upon the
open yellow pages of her Scott’s Commentary and Baxter’s Saints’ Rest,
now flared distractedly about the sitting-room, as if in amazement at
her absence. Nowhere was seen her tall, thin, hard form, the truthful
outward expression of her lean and sickly soul; nowhere was heard the
afflicted squeak of her broad calfskin shoes, symbolical of the worryings
of her fretful conscience. The doors which she habitually shut to keep
out the night-draughts remained free to swing, and, if they could find an
aiding hand or breeze, to bang, in celebration of their independence. The
dog might wag his tail in wonder through the parlor, and the cat might
profane the sofa with his stretchings and slumbers.
At first the absence of Aunt Mercy merely excited such pleasant
considerations as these. The fact was accepted as a relief from burdens;
it tended towards liberty and jocoseness of spirit. The honest and
well-meaning and devout woman had been the censor of the family, and,
next after the iron-headed Squire, its dictator. Bessie might dance
alone about the sober rooms, and play operatic airs and waltzes upon her
much-neglected piano, without being called upon to assume sackcloth and
ashes for her levity. The cheerful life which seemed to enter the house
because Aunt Mercy had left it was a severe commentary on the sombre and
unlovely character which her diseased sense of duty had driven her to
give to her unquestionably sincere religious sentiment. It hinted that
if she should be taken altogether away from the family, her loss would
awaken little mourning, and would soon be forgotten.