Spanish Town, that if Marian behaved to him all that day at the picnic
as she had done this day at Shandy Hall, he would ask her to be his wife
before he left her.
And Miss Jack also was to be at the picnic.
“There is no need of going early,” said she, when her nephew made a fuss
about the starting. “People are never very punctual at such affairs as
that; and then they are always quite long enough.” But Maurice explained
that he was anxious to be early, and on this occasion he carried his
point.
When they reached Clifton Gate the ladies were already there; not in
carriages, as people go to picnics in other and tamer countries; but
each on her own horse or her own pony. But they were not alone. Beside
Miss Leslie was a gentleman, whom Maurice knew as Lieutenant Graham, of
the flag-ship at Port Royal; and at a little distance which quite
enabled him to join in the conversation was Captain Ewing, the
lieutenant with the narrow waist of the previous year.
“We shall have a delightful day, Miss Leslie,” said the lieutenant.
“Oh, charming, isn’t it?” said Marian.
“But now to choose a place for dinner, Captain Ewing;--what do you say?”
“Will you commission me to select? You know I’m very well up in
geometry, and all that?”
“But that won’t teach you what sort of a place does for a picnic
dinner;--will it, Mr. Cumming?” And then she shook hands with Maurice,
but did not take any further special notice of him. “We’ll all go
together, if you please. The commission is too important to be left to
one.” And then Marian rode off, and the lieutenant and the captain rode
with her.
It was open for Maurice to join them if he chose, but he did not choose.
He had come there ever so much earlier than he need have done, dragging
his aunt with him, because Marian had told him that his services would
be specially required by her. And now as soon as she saw him she went
away with the two officers!--went away without vouchsafing him a word.
He made up his mind, there on the spot, that he would never think of her
again--never speak to her otherwise than he might speak to the most
indifferent of mortals.
And yet he was a man that could struggle right manfully with the world’s
troubles; one who had struggled with them from his boyhood, and had
never been overcome. Now he was unable to conceal the bitterness of his
wrath because a little girl had ridden off to look for a green spot for
her tablecloth without asking his assistance!
Picnics are, I think, in general, rather tedious for the elderly people
who accompany them. When the joints become a little stiff, dinners are
eaten most comfortably with the accompaniment of chairs and tables, and
a roof overhead is an agrément de plus. But, nevertheless, picnics
cannot exist without a certain allowance of elderly people. The Miss
Marians and Captains Ewing cannot go out to dine on the grass without
some one to look after them. So the elderly people go to picnics, in a
dull tame way, doing their duty, and wishing the day over. Now on the
morning in question, when Marian rode off with Captain Ewing and
Lieutenant Graham, Maurice Cumming remained among the elderly people.
A certain Mr. Pomken, a great Jamaica agriculturist, one of the Council,
a man who had known the good old times, got him by the button and held
him fast, discoursing wisely of sugar and rum, of Gadsden pans and
recreant negroes, on all of which subjects Maurice Cumming was known to
have an opinion of his own. But as Mr. Pomken’s words sounded into one
ear, into the other fell notes, listened to from afar,--the shrill
laughing voice of Marian Leslie as she gave her happy order to her
satellites around her, and ever and anon the bass haw-haw of Captain
Ewing, who was made welcome as the chief of her attendants. That evening
in a whisper to a brother councillor Mr. Pomken communicated his opinion
that after all there was not so much in that young Cumming as some
people said. But Mr. Pomken had no idea that that young Cumming was in
love.
And then the dinner came, spread over half an acre. Maurice was among
the last who seated himself; and when he did so it was in an awkward
comfortless corner, behind Mr. Pomken’s back, and far away from the
laughter and mirth of the day. But yet from his comfortless corner he
could see Marian as she sat in her pride of power, with her friend Julia
Davis near her, a flirt as bad as herself, and her satellites around
her, obedient to her nod, and happy in her smiles.
“Now I won’t allow any more champagne,” said Marian, “or who will there
be steady enough to help me over the rocks to the grotto?”
“Oh, you have promised me!” cried the captain.
“Indeed, I have not; have I, Julia?”
“Miss Davis has certainly promised me,” said the lieutenant.
“I have made no promise, and don’t think I shall go at all,” said Julia,
who was sometimes inclined to imagine that Captain Ewing should be her
own property.
All which and much more of the kind Maurice Cumming could not hear; but
he could see--and imagine, which was worse. How innocent and inane are,
after all, the flirtings of most young ladies, if all their words and
doings in that line could be brought to paper! I do not know whether
there be as a rule more vocal expression of the sentiment of love
between a man and woman than there is between two thrushes! They whistle
and call to each other, guided by instinct rather than by reason.
“You are going home with the ladies to-night, I believe,” said Maurice
to Miss Jack, immediately after dinner. Miss Jack acknowledged that such
was her destination for the night.
“Then my going back to Spanish Town at once won’t hurt any one--for, to
tell the truth, I have had enough of this work.”
“Why, Maurice, you were in such a hurry to come.”
“The more fool I; and so now I am in a hurry to go away. Don’t notice it
to anybody.”
Miss Jack looked in his face and saw that he was really wretched; and
she knew the cause of his wretchedness.
“Don’t go yet, Maurice,” she said; and then added with a tenderness that
was quite uncommon with her, “Go to her, Maurice, and speak to her
openly and freely, once for all; you will find that she will listen
then. Dear Maurice, do, for my sake.”
He made no answer, but walked away, roaming sadly by himself among the
trees. “Listen!” he exclaimed to himself. “Yes, she will alter a dozen
times in as many hours. Who can care for a creature that can change as
she changes?” And yet he could not help caring for her.
As he went on, climbing among rocks, he again came upon the sound of
voices, and heard especially that of Captain Ewing. “Now, Miss Leslie,
if you will take my hand you will soon be over all the difficulty.” And
then a party of seven or eight, scrambling over some stones, came nearly
on the level on which he stood, in full view of him; and leading the
others were Captain Ewing and Miss Leslie.
He turned on his heel to go away, when he caught the sound of a step
following him, and a voice saying, “Oh, there is Mr. Cumming, and I want
to speak to him;” and in a minute a light hand was on his arm.
“Why are you running away from us?” said Marian.
“Because--oh, I don’t know. I am not running away. You have your party
made up, and I am not going to intrude on it.”
“What nonsense! Do come now; we are going to this wonderful grotto. I
thought it so ill-natured of you, not joining us at dinner. Indeed you
know you had promised.”
He did not answer her, but he looked at her--full in the face, with his
sad eyes laden with love. She half understood his countenance, but only
half understood it.
“What is the matter, Maurice?” she said. “Are you angry with me? Will
you come and join us?”
“No, Marian, I cannot do that. But if you can leave them and come with
me for half an hour, I will not keep you longer.”
She stood hesitating a moment, while her companion remained on the spot
where she had left him. “Come, Miss Leslie,” called Captain Ewing. “You
will have it dark before we can get down.”
“I will come with you,” whispered she to Maurice, “but wait a moment.”
And she tripped back, and in some five minutes returned after an eager
argument with her friends. “There,” she said, “I don’t care about the
grotto, one bit, and I will walk with you now;--only they will think it
so odd.” And so they started off together.
Before the tropical darkness had fallen upon them Maurice had told the
tale of his love,--and had told it in a manner differing much from that
of Marian’s usual admirers. He spoke with passion and almost with
violence; he declared that his heart was so full of her image that he
could not rid himself of it for one minute; “nor would he wish to do
so,” he said, “if she would be his Marian, his own Marian, his very own.
But if not----” and then he explained to her, with all a lover’s warmth,
and with almost more than a lover’s liberty, what was his idea of her
being “his own, his very own,” and in doing so inveighed against her
usual light-heartedness in terms which at any rate were strong enough.
But Marian bore it all well. Perhaps she knew that the lesson was
somewhat deserved; and perhaps she appreciated at its value the love of
such a man as Maurice Cumming, weighing in her judgment the difference
between him and the Ewings and the Grahams.
And then she answered him well and prudently, with words which startled
him by their prudent seriousness as coming from her. She begged his
pardon heartily, she said, for any grief which she had caused him; but
yet how was she to be blamed, seeing that she had known nothing of his
feelings? Her father and mother had said something to her of this
proposed marriage; something, but very little; and she had answered by
saying that she did not think Maurice had any warmer regard for her than
of a cousin. After this answer neither father nor mother had pressed the
matter further. As to her own feelings she could then say nothing, for
she then knew nothing;--nothing but this, that she loved no one better
than him, or rather that she loved no one else. She would ask herself if
she could love him; but he must give her some little time for that. In
the meantime--and she smiled sweetly at him as she made the promise--she
would endeavour to do nothing that would offend him; and then she added
that on that evening she would dance with him any dances that he liked.
Maurice, with a self-denial that was not very wise, contented himself
with engaging her for the first quadrille.
They were to dance that night in the mess-room of the officers at
Newcastle. This scheme had been added on as an adjunct to the picnic,
and it therefore became necessary that the ladies should retire to their
own or their friends’ houses at Newcastle to adjust their dresses.
Marian Leslie and Julia Davis were there accommodated with the loan of a
small room by the major’s wife, and as they were brushing their hair,
and putting on their dancing-shoes, something was said between them
about Maurice Cumming.
“And so you are to be Mrs. C. of Mount Pleasant,” said Julia. “Well; I
didn’t think it would come to that at last.”
“But it has not come to that, and if it did why should I not be Mrs. C.,
as you call it?”
“The knight of the rueful countenance, I call him.”
“I tell you what then, he is an excellent young man, and the fact is you
don’t know him.”
“I don’t like excellent young men with long faces. I suppose you won’t
be let to dance quick dances at all now.”
“I shall dance whatever dances I like, as I have always done,” said
Marian, with some little asperity in her tone.
“Not you; or if you do, you’ll lose your promotion. You’ll never live to
be my Lady Rue. And what will Graham say? You know you’ve given him half
a promise.”
“That’s not true, Julia;--I never gave him the tenth part of a promise.”
“Well, he says so;” and then the words between the young ladies became a
little more angry. But, nevertheless, in due time they came forth with
faces smiling as usual, with their hair properly brushed, and without
any signs of warfare.
But Marian had to stand another attack before the business of the
evening commenced, and this was from no less doughty an antagonist than
her aunt, Miss Jack. Miss Jack soon found that Maurice had not kept his
threat of going home; and though she did not absolutely learn from him
that he had gone so far towards perfecting her dearest hopes as to make
a formal offer to Marian, nevertheless she did gather that things were
fast that way tending. If only this dancing were over! she said to
herself, dreading the unnumbered waltzes with Ewing, and the violent
polkas with Graham. So Miss Jack resolved to say one word to Marian--“A
wise word in good season,” said Miss Jack to herself, “how sweet a thing
it is.”
“Marian,” said she. “Step here a moment, I want to say a word to you.”
“Yes, aunt Sarah,” said Marian, following her aunt into a corner, not
quite in the best humour in the world; for she had a dread of some
further interference.
“Are you going to dance with Maurice to-night?”
“Yes, I believe so,--the first quadrille.”
“Well, what I was going to say is this. I don’t want you to dance many
quick dances to-night, for a reason I have;--that is, not a great many.”
“Why, aunt, what nonsense!”
“Now my dearest, dearest girl, it is all for your own sake. Well, then,
it must out. He does not like it, you know.”
“What he?”
“Maurice.”
“Well, aunt, I don’t know that I’m bound to dance or not to dance just
as Mr. Cumming may like. Papa does not mind my dancing. The people have
come here to dance, and you can hardly want to make me ridiculous by
sitting still.” And so that wise word did not appear to be very sweet.
And then the amusement of the evening commenced, and Marian stood up for
a quadrille with her lover. She however was not in the very best humour.
She had, as she thought, said and done enough for one day in Maurice’s
favour. And she had no idea, as she declared to herself, of being
lectured by aunt Sarah.
“Dearest Marian,” he said to her, as the quadrille came to a close, “it
is in your power to make me so happy,--so perfectly happy.”
“But then people have such different ideas of happiness,” she replied.
“They can’t all see with the same eyes, you know.” And so they parted.
But during the early part of the evening she was sufficiently discreet;
she did waltz with Lieutenant Graham, and polka with Captain Ewing, but
she did so in a tamer manner than was usual with her, and she made no
emulous attempts to dance down other couples. When she had done she
would sit down, and then she consented to stand up for two quadrilles
with two very tame gentlemen, to whom no lover could object.
“And so, Marian, your wings are regularly clipped at last,” said Julia
Davis coming up to her.
“No more clipped than your own,” said Marian.
“If Sir Rue won’t let you waltz now, what will he require of you when
you’re married to him?”
“I am just as well able to waltz with whom I like as you are, Julia; and
if you say so in that way, I shall think it’s envy.”
“Ha--ha--ha; I may have envied you some of your beaux before now; I dare
say I have. But I certainly do not envy you Sir Rue.” And then she went
off to her partner.
All this was too much for Marian’s weak strength, and before long she
was again whirling round with Captain Ewing. “Come, Miss Leslie,” said
he, “let us see what we can do. Graham and Julia Davis have been saying
that your waltzing days are over, but I think we can put them down.”
Marian as she got up, and raised her arm in order that Ewing might put
his round her waist, caught Maurice’s eye as he leaned against a wall,
and read in it a stern rebuke. “This is too bad,” she said to herself.
“He shall not make a slave of me, at any rate as yet.” And away she went
as madly, more madly than ever, and for the rest of the evening she
danced with Captain Ewing and with him alone.
There is an intoxication quite distinct from that which comes from
strong drink. When the judgment is altogether overcome by the spirits
this species of drunkenness comes on, and in this way Marian Leslie was
drunk that night. For two hours she danced with Captain Ewing, and ever
and anon she kept saying to herself that she would teach the world to
know--and of all the world Mr. Cumming especially--that she might be
lead, but not driven.
Then about four o’clock she went home, and as she attempted to undress
herself in her own room she burst into violent tears and opened her
heart to her sister--“Oh, Fanny, I do love him, I do love him so dearly!
and now he will never come to me again!”
Maurice stood still with his back against the wall, for the full two
hours of Marian’s exhibition, and then he said to his aunt before he
left--“I hope you have now seen enough; you will hardly mention her name
to me again.” Miss Jack groaned from the bottom of her heart but she
said nothing. She said nothing that night to any one; but she lay awake
in her bed, thinking, till it was time to rise and dress herself. “Ask
Miss Marian to come to me,” she said to the black girl who came to
assist her. But it was not till she had sent three times, that Miss
Marian obeyed the summons.
At three o’clock on the following day Miss Jack arrived at her own hall
door in Spanish Town. Long as the distance was she ordinarily rode it
all, but on this occasion she had provided a carriage to bring her over
as much of the journey as it was practicable for her to perform on
wheels. As soon as she reached her own hall door she asked if Mr.
Cumming was at home. “Yes,” the servant said. “He was in the small
book-room, at the back of the house, up stairs.” Silently, as if afraid
of being heard, she stepped up her own stairs into her own drawing-room;
and very silently she was followed by a pair of feet lighter and smaller
than her own.
Miss Jack was usually somewhat of a despot in her own house, but there
was nothing despotic about her now as she peered into the book-room.
This she did with her bonnet still on, looking round the half-opened
door as though she were afraid to disturb her nephew. He sat at the
window looking out into the verandah which ran behind the house, so
intent on his thoughts that he did not hear her.
“Maurice,” she said, “can I come in?”
“Come in? oh yes, of course;” and he turned round sharply at her. “I
tell you what, aunt; I am not well here and I cannot stay out the
session. I shall go back to Mount Pleasant.”
“Maurice,” and she walked close up to him as she spoke, “Maurice, I have
brought some one with me to ask your pardon.”
His face became red up to the roots of his hair as he stood looking at
her without answering. “You would grant it certainly,” she continued,
“if you knew how much it would be valued.”
“Whom do you mean? who is it?” he asked at last.
“One who loves you as well as you love her--and she cannot love you
better. Come in, Marian.” The poor girl crept in at the door, ashamed of
what she was induced to do, but yet looking anxiously into her lover’s
face. “You asked her yesterday to be your wife,” said Miss Jack, “and
she did not then know her own mind. Now she has had a lesson. You will
ask her once again; will you not, Maurice?”
What was he to say? How was he to refuse, when that soft little hand was
held out to him; when those eyes laden with tears just ventured to look
into his face?
“I beg your pardon if I angered you last night,” she said.
In half a minute Miss Jack had left the room, and in the space of
another thirty seconds Maurice had forgiven her. “I am your own now, you
know,” she whispered to him in the course of that long evening.
“Yesterday, you know--,” but the sentence was never finished.
It was in vain that Julia Davis was ill-natured and sarcastic, in vain
that Ewing and Graham made joint attempt upon her constancy. From that
night to the morning of her marriage--and the interval was only three
months--Marian Leslie was never known to flirt.
THE COURTSHIP OF SUSAN BELL.
John Munroe Bell had been a lawyer in Albany, State of New York, and as
such had thriven well. He had thriven well as long as thrift and
thriving on this earth had been allowed to him. But the Almighty had
seen fit to shorten his span.
Early in life he had married a timid, anxious, pretty, good little wife,
whose whole heart and mind had been given up to do his bidding and
deserve his love. She had not only deserved it but had possessed it, and
as long as John Munroe Bell had lived, Henrietta Bell--Hetta as he
called her--had been a woman rich in blessings. After twelve years of
such blessings he had left her, and had left with her two daughters, a
second Hetta, and the heroine of our little story, Susan Bell.
A lawyer in Albany may thrive passing well for eight or ten years, and
yet not leave behind him any very large sum of money if he dies at the
end of that time. Some small modicum, some few thousand dollars, John
Bell had amassed, so that his widow and daughters were not absolutely
driven to look for work or bread.
In those happy days, when cash had begun to flow in plenteously to the
young father of the family, he had taken it into his head to build for
himself, or rather for his young female brood, a small neat house in the
outskirts of Saratoga Springs. In doing so he was instigated as much by
the excellence of the investment for his pocket as by the salubrity of
the place for his girls. He furnished the house well, and then during
some summer weeks his wife lived there, and sometimes he let it.
How the widow grieved when the lord of her heart and master of her mind
was laid in the grave, I need not tell. She had already counted ten
years of widowhood, and her children had grown to be young women beside
her at the time of which I am now about to speak. Since that sad day on
which they had left Albany they had lived together at the cottage at
the Springs. In winter their life had been lonely enough; but as soon as
the hot weather began to drive the fainting citizens out from New York,
they had always received two or three boarders--old ladies generally,
and occasionally an old gentleman--persons of very steady habits, with
whose pockets the widow’s moderate demands agreed better than the hotel
charges. And so the Bells lived for ten years.
That Saratoga is a gay place in July, August, and September, the world
knows well enough. To girls who go there with trunks full of muslin and
crinoline, for whom a carriage and pair of horses is always waiting
immediately after dinner, whose fathers’ pockets are bursting with
dollars, it is a very gay place. Dancing and flirtations come as a
matter of course, and matrimony follows after with only too great
rapidity. But the place was not very gay for Hetta or Susan Bell.
In the first place the widow was a timid woman, and among other fears
feared greatly that she should be thought guilty of setting traps for
husbands. Poor mothers! how often are they charged with this sin when
their honest desires go no further than that their bairns may be
“respectit like the lave.” And then she feared flirtations; flirtations
that should be that and nothing more, flirtations that are so
destructive of the heart’s sweetest essence. She feared love also,
though she longed for that as well as feared it;--for her girls, I mean;
all such feelings for herself were long laid under ground;--and then,
like a timid creature as she was, she had other indefinite fears, and
among them, a great fear that those girls of hers would be left
husbandless,--a phase of life which after her twelve years of bliss she
regarded as anything but desirable. But the upshot was,--the upshot of
so many fears and such small means,--that Hetta and Susan Bell had but a
dull life of it.
Were it not that I am somewhat closely restricted in the number of my
pages, I would describe at full the merits and beauties of Hetta and
Susan Bell. As it is I can but say a few words. At our period of their
lives Hetta was nearly one-and-twenty, and Susan was just nineteen.
Hetta was a short, plump, demure young woman, with the softest smoothed
hair, and the brownest brightest eyes. She was very useful in the house,
good at corn cakes, and thought much, particularly in these latter
months, of her religious duties. Her sister in the privacy of their own
little room would sometimes twit her with the admiring patience with
which she would listen to the lengthened eloquence of Mr. Phineas
Beckard, the Baptist minister. Now Mr. Phineas Beckard was a bachelor.