TEN days later Philip came into Aunt Jane’s parlor, looking excited and
gloomy, with a letter in his hand. He put it down on her table without
its envelope,--a thing that always particularly annoyed her. A letter
without its envelope, she was wont to say, was like a man without a
face, or a key without a string,--something incomplete, preposterous.
As usual, however, he strode across her prejudices, and said, “I have
something to tell you. It is a fact.”
“Is it?” said Aunt Jane, curtly. “That is refreshing in these times.”
“A good beginning,” said Kate. “Go on. You have prepared us for
something incredible.”
“You will think it so,” said Malbone. “Emilia is engaged to Mr. John
Lambert.” And he went out of the room.
“Good Heavens!” said Aunt Jane, taking off her spectacles. “What a man!
He is ugly enough to frighten the neighboring crows. His face looks as
if it had fallen together out of chaos, and the features had come where
it had pleased Fate. There is a look of industrious nothingness about
him, such as busy dogs have. I know the whole family. They used to bake
our bread.”
“I suppose they are good and sensible,” said Kate.
“Like boiled potatoes, my dear,” was the response,--“wholesome but
perfectly uninteresting.”
“Is he of that sort?” asked Kate.
“No,” said her aunt; “not uninteresting, but ungracious. But I like an
ungracious man better than one like Philip, who hangs over young girls
like a soft-hearted avalanche. This Lambert will govern Emilia, which is
what she needs.”
“She will never love him,” said Kate, “which is the one thing she needs.
There is nothing that could not be done with Emilia by any person with
whom she was in love; and nothing can ever be done with her by anybody
else. No good will ever come of this, and I hope she will never marry
him.”
With this unusual burst, Kate retreated to Hope. Hope took the news more
patiently than any one, but with deep solicitude. A worldly marriage
seemed the natural result of the Ingleside influence, but it had not
occurred to anybody that it would come so soon. It had not seemed
Emilia’s peculiar temptation; and yet nobody could suppose that she
looked at John Lambert through any glamour of the affections.
Mr. John Lambert was a millionnaire, a politician, and a widower. The
late Mrs. Lambert had been a specimen of that cheerful hopelessness of
temperament that one finds abundantly developed among the middle-aged
women of country towns. She enjoyed her daily murders in the newspapers,
and wept profusely at the funerals of strangers. On every occasion,
however felicitous, she offered her condolences in a feeble voice, that
seemed to have been washed a great many times and to have faded. But she
was a good manager, a devoted wife, and was more cheerful at home than
elsewhere, for she had there plenty of trials to exercise her eloquence,
and not enough joy to make it her duty to be doleful. At last her poor,
meek, fatiguing voice faded out altogether, and her husband mourned
her as heartily as she would have bemoaned the demise of the most
insignificant neighbor. After her death, being left childless, he had
nothing to do but to make money, and he naturally made it. Having taken
his primary financial education in New England, he graduated at that
great business university, Chicago, and then entered on the public
practice of wealth in New York.
Aunt Jane had perhaps done injustice to the personal appearance of Mr.
John Lambert. His features were irregular, but not insignificant, and
there was a certain air of slow command about him, which made some
persons call him handsome. He was heavily built, with a large,
well-shaped head, light whiskers tinged with gray, and a sort of dusty
complexion. His face was full of little curved wrinkles, as if it were
a slate just ruled for sums in long division, and his small blue eyes
winked anxiously a dozen different ways, as if they were doing the sums.
He seemed to bristle with memorandum-books, and kept drawing them from
every pocket, to put something down. He was slow of speech, and his very
heaviness of look added to the impression of reserved power about the
man.
All his career in life had been a solid progress, and his boldest
speculations seemed securer than the legitimate business of less potent
financiers. Beginning business life by peddling gingerbread on a railway
train, he had developed such a genius for railway management as some
men show for chess or for virtue; and his accumulating property had the
momentum of a planet.
He had read a good deal at odd times, and had seen a great deal of
men. His private morals were unstained, he was equable and amiable, had
strong good sense, and never got beyond his depth. He had travelled in
Europe and brought home many statistics, some new thoughts, and a few
good pictures selected by his friends. He spent his money liberally for
the things needful to his position, owned a yacht, bred trotting-horses,
and had founded a theological school. He submitted to these and other
social observances from a vague sense of duty as an American citizen;
his real interest lay in business and in politics. Yet he conducted
these two vocations on principles diametrically opposite. In business
he was more honest than the average; in politics he had no conception
of honesty, for he could see no difference between a politician and any
other merchandise. He always succeeded in business, for he thoroughly
understood its principles; in politics he always failed in the end, for
he recognized no principles at all. In business he was active, resolute,
and seldom deceived; in politics he was equally active, but was apt to
be irresolute, and was deceived every day of his life. In both cases
it was not so much from love of power that he labored, as from the
excitement of the game. The larger the scale the better he liked it; a
large railroad operation, a large tract of real estate, a big and noisy
statesman,--these investments he found irresistible.
On which of his two sets of principles he would manage a wife remained
to be proved. It is the misfortune of what are called self-made men
in America, that, though early accustomed to the society of men of the
world, they often remain utterly unacquainted with women of the world,
until those charming perils are at last sprung upon them in full force,
at New York or Washington. John Lambert at forty was as absolutely
ignorant of the qualities and habits of a cultivated woman as of the
details of her toilet. The plain domesticity of his departed wife he had
understood and prized; he remembered her household ways as he did her
black alpaca dress; indeed, except for that item of apparel, she was not
so unlike himself. In later years he had seen the women of society;
he had heard them talk; he had heard men talk about them, wittily or
wickedly, at the clubs; he had perceived that a good many of them wished
to marry him, and yet, after all, he knew no more of them than of the
rearing of humming-birds or orchids,--dainty, tropical things which he
allowed his gardener to raise, he keeping his hands off, and only paying
the bills. Whether there was in existence a class of women who were both
useful and refined,--any intermediate type between the butterfly and the
drudge,--was a question which he had sometimes asked himself, without
having the materials to construct a reply.
With imagination thus touched and heart unfilled, this man had been
bewitched from the very first moment by Emilia. He kept it to himself,
and heard in silence the criticisms made at the club-windows. To those
perpetual jokes about marriage, which are showered with such graceful
courtesy about the path of widowers, he had no reply; or at most
would only admit that he needed some elegant woman to preside over his
establishment, and that he had better take her young, as having habits
less fixed. But in his secret soul he treasured every tone of this
girl’s voice, every glance of her eye, and would have kept in a casket
of gold and diamonds the little fragrant glove she once let fall. He
envied the penniless and brainless boys, who, with ready gallantry,
pushed by him to escort her to her carriage; and he lay awake at night
to form into words the answer he ought to have made, when she threw at
him some careless phrase, and gave him the opportunity to blunder.
And she, meanwhile, unconscious of his passion, went by him in her
beauty, and caught him in the net she never threw. Emilia was always
piquant, because she was indifferent; she had never made an effort
in her life, and she had no respect for persons. She was capable of
marrying for money, perhaps, but the sacrifice must all be completed in
a single vow. She would not tutor nor control herself for the purpose.
Hand and heart must be duly transferred, she supposed, whenever the time
was up; but till then she must be free.
This with her was not art, but necessity; yet the most accomplished art
could have devised nothing so effectual to hold her lover. His strong
sense had always protected him from the tricks of matchmaking mammas and
their guileless maids. Had Emilia made one effort to please him, once
concealed a dislike, once affected a preference, the spell might
have been broken. Had she been his slave, he might have become a very
unyielding or a very heedless despot. Making him her slave, she kept
him at the very height of bliss. This king of railways and purchaser of
statesmen, this man who made or wrecked the fortunes of others by his
whim, was absolutely governed by a reckless, passionate, inexperienced,
ignorant girl.
And this passion was made all the stronger by being a good deal confined
to his own breast. Somehow it was very hard for him to talk sentiment
to Emilia; he instinctively saw she disliked it, and indeed he liked her
for not approving the stiff phrases which were all he could command. Nor
could he find any relief of mind in talking with others about her. It
enraged him to be clapped on the back and congratulated by his compeers;
and he stopped their coarse jokes, often rudely enough. As for the young
men at the club, he could not bear to hear them mention his darling’s
name, however courteously. He knew well enough that for them the
betrothal had neither dignity nor purity; that they held it to be as
much a matter of bargain and sale as their worst amours. He would far
rather have talked to the theological professors whose salaries he
paid, for he saw that they had a sort of grave, formal tradition of the
sacredness of marriage. And he had a right to claim that to him it was
sacred, at least as yet; all the ideal side of his nature was suddenly
developed; he walked in a dream; he even read Tennyson.
Sometimes he talked a little to his future brother-in-law,
Harry,--assuming, as lovers are wont, that brothers see sisters on their
ideal side. This was quite true of Harry and Hope, but not at all true
as regarded Emilia. She seemed to him simply a beautiful and ungoverned
girl whom he could not respect, and whom he therefore found it very hard
to idealize. Therefore he heard with a sort of sadness the outpourings
of generous devotion from John Lambert.
“I don’t know how it is, Henry,” the merchant would gravely say, “I
can’t get rightly used to it, that I feel so strange. Honestly, now, I
feel as if I was beginning life over again. It ain’t a selfish feeling,
so I know there’s some good in it. I used to be selfish enough, but I
ain’t so to her. You may not think it, but if it would make her happy, I
believe I could lie down and let her carriage roll over me. By -----,
I would build her a palace to live in, and keep the lodge at the gate
myself, just to see her pass by. That is, if she was to live in it alone
by herself. I couldn’t stand sharing her. It must be me or nobody.”
Probably there was no male acquaintance of the parties, however
hardened, to whom these fine flights would have seemed more utterly
preposterous than to the immediate friend and prospective bridesmaid,
Miss Blanche Ingleside. To that young lady, trained sedulously by a
devoted mother, life was really a serious thing. It meant the full rigor
of the marriage market, tempered only by dancing and new dresses. There
was a stern sense of duty beneath all her robing and disrobing; she
conscientiously did what was expected of her, and took her little
amusements meanwhile. It was supposed that most of the purchasers in the
market preferred slang and bare shoulders, and so she favored them with
plenty of both. It was merely the law of supply and demand. Had John
Lambert once hinted that he would accept her in decent black, she would
have gone to the next ball as a Sister of Charity; but where was the
need of it, when she and her mother both knew that, had she appeared as
the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, she would not have won him? So her only
resource was a cheerful acquiescence in Emilia’s luck, and a judicious
propitiation of the accepted favorite.
“I wouldn’t mind playing Virtue Rewarded myself, young woman,” said
Blanche, “at such a scale of prices. I would do it even to so slow an
audience as old Lambert. But you see, it isn’t my line. Don’t forget
your humble friends when you come into your property, that’s all.”
Then the tender coterie of innocents entered on some preliminary
consideration of wedding-dresses.
When Emilia came home, she dismissed the whole matter lightly as a
settled thing, evaded all talk with Aunt Jane, and coolly said to Kate
that she had no objection to Mr. Lambert, and might as well marry him as
anybody else.
“I am not like you and Hal, you know,” said she. “I have no fancy for
love in a cottage. I never look well in anything that is not costly. I
have not a taste that does not imply a fortune. What is the use of love?
One marries for love, and is unhappy ever after. One marries for money,
and perhaps gets love after all. I dare say Mr. Lambert loves me, though
I do not see why he should.”
“I fear he does,” said Kate, almost severely.
“Fear?” said Emilia.
“Yes,” said Kate. “It is an unequal bargain, where one side does all the
loving.”
“Don’t be troubled,” said Emilia. “I dare say he will not love me long.
Nobody ever did!” And her eyes filled with tears which she dashed away
angrily, as she ran up to her room.
It was harder yet for her to talk with Hope, but she did it, and that in
a very serious mood. She had never been so open with her sister.
“Aunt Jane once told me,” she said, “that my only safety was in marrying
a good man. Now I am engaged to one.”
“Do you love him, Emilia?” asked Hope, gravely.
“Not much,” said Emilia, honestly. “But perhaps I shall, by and by.”
“Emilia,” cried Hope, “there is no such thing as happiness in a marriage
without love.”
“Mine is not without love,” the girl answered. “He loves me. It
frightens me to see how much he loves me. I can have the devotion of a
lifetime, if I will. Perhaps it is hard to receive it in such a way, but
I can have it. Do you blame me very much?”
Hope hesitated. “I cannot blame you so much, my child,” she said, “as if
I thought it were money for which you cared. It seems to me that there
must be something beside that, and yet--”
“O Hope, how I thank you,” interrupted Emilia. “It is not money. You
know I do not care about money, except just to buy my clothes and
things. At least, I do not care about so much as he has,--more than a
million dollars, only think! Perhaps they said two million. Is it wrong
for me to marry him, just because he has that?”
“Not if you love him.”
“I do not exactly love him, but O Hope, I cannot tell you about it. I am
not so frivolous as you think. I want to do my duty. I want to make you
happy too: you have been so sweet to me.”
“Did you think it would make me happy to have you married?” asked Hope,
surprised, and kissing again and again the young, sad face. And the two
girls went upstairs together, brought for the moment into more sisterly
nearness by the very thing that had seemed likely to set them forever
apart.