EXPLANATIONS AND EXPEDIENTS.
It was a scene of solemn power and force,
That woman, standing there, with marble face,
As cold and still as any sheeted corse,
The martyr herald of her own disgrace.
Meantime another strange scene was going on at the Farnham mansion. On
that day young Farnham was of age. His mother was to give up her trust
as associate guardian, and for the first time in his life, the young
man would have a right to question and act for himself.
The counsellor whom Mrs. Farnham had summoned from the city--a shrewd,
unscrupulous lawyer, was present with his accounts. The young man held
these documents in his hand, with an angry flush upon his brow.
"And so this testament left me still a slave!" he exclaimed,
passionately. "In all things where a man should be free as thought, I
am bound eternally."
"You were only required not to marry against this lady's consent,"
answered the lawyer; "in all things else, as I am informed, this great
property, subject to the lady's dower of course, was left to your
control."
"In all things else!" exclaimed the youth, bitterly. "Why, this is
everything."
"Certainly, certainly," answered the lawyer, "you see now the great
self-sacrifice made by this inestimable lady, when she destroyed the
will, leaving you encumbered only with a moral obligation"
"Which she knew to be fifty times as binding," said Farnham, glancing
sternly at his mother.
"Yes, yes; I knew that your sense of honor would be stronger than
fifty legal documents like that; I depended on your generosity,
Frederick; I drew a medium between the legal tyrant that your papa
made me, and the powerless mother. Fred is noble, I argued; he loved
his father; he will not bow to the law, but will fling all this
fortune back into my lap. I will burn the will and trust to his sense
of duty. There was a medium, sir, you comprehend all its delicate
outlines, I trust."
This was said blandly to the lawyer, who bowed with a look of profound
appreciation.
Farnham stood up firmly. "Mother, in this thing there is no medium
between right and wrong. If my father left his property to me, his
only child, on these conditions they must be enforced." He hesitated
an instant, the crimson mounted to his temples, and he added in a
clear, low voice, "madam, will you say upon your solemn word of honor,
that this was the purport of the will you have burned?"
Mrs. Farnham turned white, her eyes fell, she trembled beneath the
searching glance of her son.
"I--I cannot remember word for word, but as surely as I stand
here, the property would have never been yours by the will,
without--without"--
"Enough," said the young man, "enough that you have said it once, I
submit to the will of my father."
"And you give up this girl. Dear, dear, Frederick!"
"No, madam; I give up the property. You have made us equal; Isabel
would have refused me with this wealth; she will not find the heart to
reject me now."
"Frederick, you are--yes--if this gentleman permits, I must say
it--you are an ingrate!"
"My guardian must be informed of this will and its conditions," said
Farnham.
"I expected this!" exclaimed Mrs. Farnham, addressing the lawyer; "no
regard for his mother, no respect for his dear father's memory. You
see, my friend, what a trial I have had!"
The lawyer looked keenly at young Farnham.
"You had better let this subject rest," he said; "it has been well
managed so far; leave it with this good lady and myself."
"There seems no need of management here," was the firm answer; "my
father's will must be carried out."
"Let me act between you and your gentle mamma, dear sir. She must
yield a little, I see. You have a fancy, I am told, for the young lady
who has been so long an object of her bounty. Suppose your mother can
be induced to withdraw her objections to the match, on condition that
you let this matter of the will rest. It is so unpleasant to a
sensitive nature like hers, this raking up of buried troubles. Consent
to let them rest as they are, and I will undertake to gain consent to
your marriage with this--I must admit--very beautiful young creature.
Say, is it settled?"
"Not yet, or thus," answered the young man, firmly; "I have an
alternative, and I solemnly believe the only one which will win this
noble girl to become my wife. Instead of embezzling my father's
property, which does not belong to me, if I marry her, I can renounce
that which brings so cruel an incumbrance."
"But you will not," said the lawyer.
"Yes, if it is necessary to gain Isabel Chester, I will!" answered the
youth.
"In that case you know the property will become your mother's!"
The young man looked suddenly and searchingly on his mother. His heart
rose indignantly. He could not force himself to respect that woman!
"Have you decided?" inquired the lawyer, smiling.
"Not till I have seen Isabel," answered the youth, looking at his
watch. "Madam, it is half-past nine, and I think we promised that old
man to be at his Homestead at ten; Isabel Chester is there. In her
presence you shall hear my decision."
Mrs. Farnham looked at the lawyer, who almost imperceptibly bent his
head, and she rang the bell for Salina to bring her shawl and bonnet.
Directly the strong-minded one came with an oriental cashmere thrown
over one arm, and a costly bonnet perched on her right hand.
"It's time for us to be a-going if we ever expect to get there, now I
tell you," she said, tossing the lady's garments into her lap, and
tying her own calico hood with superfluous energy; "aunt Hannah is
punctual as the clock, and expects others to be so, too. Come!"
The lawyer had risen, and was quietly fitting a pair of dark gloves to
his hands directly in range of Mrs. Farnham's eye who could not choose
but remark the contrast between those white hands and the dark kid,
while she coquetted with the folds of her shawl.
"Come!" repeated Salina, thrusting her arm through that of the lawyer,
and bearing him forward in spite of all opposition. "Just a beau
apiece. Mr. Farnham will take care of the old lady, and I can get
along with you. Half a loaf is better than no bread, at any time. So,
for want of a better, I'm content."
The lawyer would have rebelled when once out-of-doors, but young
Farnham had placed himself near his mother, and was walking by her
side with so stern a brow, that he resolved to submit, and, if
possible, glean some intelligence from Salina about the object of
their visit to the Homestead; but that exemplary female was as much
puzzled as himself, and they reached the Homestead mutually
discontented.
"This way--take a seat in the out-room till I go call Miss Hannah,"
cried Salina, pushing open the front door that grated and groaned as
if reluctant to admit such guests. "This door!"
Salina pushed the out-room door open as she spoke, and to her surprise
found not only aunt Hannah, but the whole family. Mary Fuller, Joseph,
Isabel Chester, the two old people, and, what was most remarkable, a
clergyman of the church at which uncle Nat and his sister worshipped.
Judge Sharp came in a moment later.
"Sit down," said aunt Hannah formally, and in a suppressed voice, as
if they had been invited to a funeral. Then as the party ranged
themselves in the stiff, wooden chairs, chilled by the silence and
gravity of everything they saw, aunt Hannah drew close to Joseph, who
sat by Mary, and said to them both in a serious gentle way:
"Have faith in me, children."
"We have, we have!" they murmured together with a firmer clasp of the
hands.
"Remember I have promised, now be ready!"
They both began to tremble, and a thrill of strange delight ran from
frame to frame, kindling its way through their clasped fingers.
Aunt Hannah turned towards her guests, her upright figure took an air
of dignity, her dark eyes lighted up and scanned the faces of her
guests firmly, they dwelt longer upon the withered features of Mrs.
Farnham, and a cold smile crept over her lips as she said,
"We have invited you to a wedding. It is now time, Joseph, Mary!"
The young couple stood up, still holding each other by the hands. The
ceremony commenced, and it was remarkable that when the clergyman came
to that portion which commands any one that can make objections to
render them then, or henceforth hold his peace, aunt Hannah held up
her hand that he might pause, and stepping in front of Mrs. Farnham,
said in a low stern voice,
"Have you any objections?"
"_Me_!" exclaimed the lady with a sneer. "What do I care about them!"
"Then you are willing that the ceremony goes on?" persisted the
singular woman, without a change of voice or attitude.
"What earthly objection can I have? of course the ceremony may go on,
what are these people to me?"
The ceremony went on, and with a deep breath of such joy as few human
beings ever know, the husband and wife sat down, almost faint with
excess of emotion.
Isabel Chester had been sitting apart from the group, passive and
feeble, but now and then lifting her great mournful eyes with a look
of unuttered misery to the face of young Farnham.
The first of these eloquent glances brought him to her side.
"Isabel, I will give up all, I came to renounce everything but you,"
he whispered.
She shook her head mournfully and glanced with a shudder towards Mrs.
Farnham.
"Poor or rich I cannot marry her son. It may kill me, but my oath, my
oath! let me rest, let me rest"--
She drew her hand wearily across her forehead and her bright eyes
filled with tears.
"But you are sorry for this oath, my Isabel?"
"Sorry, it is killing me."
He looked down upon the white folds of her muslin wrapper, brightened
as they were by the crimson glow of a dressing-gown that flowed over
it. He saw how thin she had grown, how like wax her delicate hand lay
upon the crimson of her dress, and how mournfully large her eyes had
become.
"This shall not be, it is madness!" he exclaimed aloud and
passionately. "Mother I"--
"Hush!" said aunt Hannah, silencing him with her uplifted hand, "let
_me_ speak!"
She moved a step forward, standing almost in the centre of the room,
with Mrs. Farnham and her lawyer friend on the left, and the clergyman
who stood near the newly married pair on her right. All had a full
view of her face. Her features seemed harder than ever--the expression
on them was stern as granite. Her eyes burned with a settled purpose,
and her whole person was imposing.
For a moment, when all eyes were bent upon her she seemed to falter;
you could see by the choking in her throat and a spasmodic gripe of
her fingers, that the struggle for her first words was agony.
But she did speak, and her voice was so hoarse that it struck those
around her with amazement; nay, a look of awe stole over the faces
turned so earnestly towards her.
"Twenty-one years ago last night, I committed a great wrong in the
face of God and the law," she said; "that woman," here she lifted her
long, boney finger and pointed it towards Mrs. Farnham, "that woman
had wronged me and the being I loved better than myself, and this
filled me with a heathenish thirst for vengeance upon her."
"Me! me! why, did you ever--I never wronged a creature in my whole
life--you know how bland and gentle I always am!" whimpered that lady.
"Be still!" interposed aunt Hannah in the same deep voice. "The
husband of that woman was betrothed to me in my youth."
"I'll never believe that, never--never!" cried Mrs. Farnham, flushing
up angrily.
"Peace, I say, and do not interrupt me again. My parents died leaving
Anna, a little girl pretty as an angel, for Nathan and I to take care
of; she was the dearest, loveliest little thing."
"I'll take my Bible oath of that," cried Salina, reddening suddenly
around the eyes, "I never set eyes on anything half so purty in my
life."
"I gave up all for this child, and so did Nathan; we both agreed to
live single for her sake and be parents to her."
"More fools you," muttered Salina, "as if uncle Nat's wife couldn't
and wouldn't have taken care of a dozen such children, that is, if
he'd only had sense enough to choose a smart--but what's the use, it's
all over now."
This was said in a muttered undertone, and aunt Hannah went on without
heeding it.
"It was a hard struggle, for I was young then, and loved the man I
expected to spend my life with--Nathan too"--
"No matter about me, Hannah, don't mention anything I did; it was hard
at the time, but one gets used to almost everything," cried the old
man, wiping the tears from his eyes with a cotton handkerchief that
Salina handed to him, her own eyes flushing redder and redder from
sympathy.
"I need not speak of him," commenced aunt Hannah, with one look at her
brother's face. "He did his duty; if I had done mine as well, this
hour of shame would not have brought me where I am.
"The child grew up into a beautiful girl--so beautiful and with such
sweet ways, that it did one good only to look at her, but she was
willful too, and loved play; wild as a kitten she was, but as harmless
too.
"She would go out to work; we tried to stop it, but the child would
go; Salina there, kept house for old Mrs. Farnham; they wanted help to
spin up the wool and Anna went. She came back engaged to Mr. Farnham.
I forgave her, God is my judge; I did not hate the child for
supplanting me in the only love I ever hoped to know. It was a hard
trial, but I bore it without a single bitter thought toward either of
them. It nearly killed me, but I did my duty by the child.
"He went to the city, for he had gone into business there, and was
getting rich. Time went fast with him and slow with us. In the end he
married that woman. Anna went wild when she knew it, and like a
wounded bird fled to the first open heart for shelter. She married
too, and in a single year died here in this room."
"I remember it, oh! how well I remember it," sobbed Salina, while
uncle Nat covered his face with both hands and wept aloud.
"It was an awful night. Thunder shook the Old Homestead, and the winds
rocked it as if death were rocking her to sleep; across them windows
came the lightning, flash after flash, as if the angels of heaven were
shooting fiery arrows over her as she breathed her last. Salina was
there, but no doctor. He was at Mrs. Farnham's mansion up yonder, for
that night her only son was born.
"He came at last, to find her dead body lying there, cold and pale in
the lightning flashes that broke against the windows. He found me
alone with my dead sister, numb with sorrow, dead at the heart.
"After this Salina brought Anna's baby and laid it in my lap. The
doctor had ordered her home. The rich man's wife could not be
neglected."
"But I wouldn't have gone, you know I wouldn't for anything he could
say," cried Salina, firing up amid her tears. "If you hadn't said go,
all the doctors on arth couldn't have made me stir a foot!"
"Yes, I told you to go, but it was in bitterness of heart; why should
I with that living soul in my lap, and that cold body before me, keep
you from the rich woman's couch? Farnham's heir must be kept warm,
while ours lay wailing and shivering in my lap.
"I was left alone amid the lightning and thunder and the noise of the
rain; my poor dead sister seemed to call out from the clouds, that I
should help her spirit free from the raging of the tempest--I think
all this worked on my brain, for I sat and looked on the babe with a
stillness that seemed to last for months. I thought of her broken
life--of the poverty she had felt--of that which must follow her
child. I thought of that woman, so paltry, so mean, so utterly
unworthy of care, pampered with wealth, comforted with love, while my
sister, so much her better in everything had died of neglect, I
thought of many things, not connectedly, but in a wild bitter mood
that made me fierce under the wrongs that had been heaped upon us. It
is impossible for me to say how the idea came first, but I resolved
that her child should not be the sufferer. His father was miserably
poor, but he would not, I knew, give up his child. I did not reason,
but these thoughts flashed through my brain, and with them came an
impulse to give her child the destiny which Anna's should escape. I
tore a blanket from the bed; poor Anna did not need it then. I wrapped
it about the child and went forth into the storm. The lightning blazed
along my path, and the thunder boomed over me like minute guns when a
funeral is in motion.
"I knew the house well, and stole in through the back door onward to
the half-lighted chamber of Farnham's wife. Her son lay in a sumptuous
crib under a cloud of lace. I laid Anna's babe on the floor and took
this one from its silken nest. My hands were cold and trembling, but
the dresses were soon changed, and in a few minutes I went out with
Farnham's heir rolled up in my blanket, and Anna's child sleeping
sweetly in the cradle that I had robbed."
Mrs. Farnham started up, pale and trembling.
"What, what! my child rolled up in a blanket! a mean, coarse blanket!"
"Be still," commanded aunt Hannah; "your child has had nothing but
coarse blankets all his life; but he is all the better for that; ask
him if I have not toiled that he and the good man who brought him up
might never want; but I was a feeble woman and could do no more--a
woman weighed down by a sense of the crime which I might repent of
daily, but could not force myself to confess."
"But my child! where is my child, you horrible kidnapper?" cried Mrs.
Farnham. "I will know--but remember, if he's been brought up among
common people and all that, I never will own him."
"Your son," said aunt Hannah, going gently toward Joseph Esmond, and
laying her hand on his shoulder. "This is your son; he is worthy of
any mother's love."
"My son, and married to that thing! I never will own him, don't ask
me, I never will!" cried the excited woman, eyeing the youth,
disdainfully. "He is handsome enough, but I cannot own him for my
son!"
"Mother," said the youth, rising and coming forward, with both hands
extended. "Mother, why will you not love me?"
She had gathered up her shawl, haughtily, and was about to leave the
room; but his voice struck upon her like a spell; the folds of her
shawl dropt downward, and for once, yielding to a warm, natural
impulse, she burst into a passion of tears, and received the youth in
her arms.
"Oh, mother, bear with me; you would, did you know how I have pined
for a mother's love."
She did not speak, but kissed his forehead two or three times, and sat
down subdued, with gentler affections than she had ever shown before.
"Not only to me, mother, but to my wife. Will you not love my wife?"
Mary was drawn forward, for one arm of her husband was around her, and
stood with downcast eyes and flushed cheeks, waiting for the repulse,
which seemed inevitable.
Mrs. Farnham looked at him, and something of the old scorn curled her
lip. Mary slowly lifted her eyes, full of meek solicitude, and even
her mother-in-law's heart was touched.
"Well, well, make him a good wife, and I'll try to love you."
"I," said the youth, whom we have known as young Farnham--"I have no
longer a mother."
"No," said uncle Nat, arising and opening his arms; "but you have an
old uncle and aunt that will divide their last crust with you. Sister,
sister, he looks like Anna, now, with the tears in his eyes."
Aunt Hannah turned; it was the first time in her life that she had
ever looked her nephew full in the face, and now a consciousness of
the wrong she had done made her timid; she stood before him with
downcast eyes, trembling and afraid.
"My aunt, will you not look upon me?"
"I have wronged you," she said. "How will you bear hard work and
want?"
"Ask Isabel if she thinks I cannot bear them with her."
Isabel stood up; her strength came back with the sudden joy that
overwhelmed her, and she held forth her hand to the youth, radiant as
an angel. He led her towards Mrs. Farnham.
"Mother, you will not repulse us, now, when we are alike in condition.
Give us your blessing before we go forth on our struggle with the
world."
All that was good in that woman's nature broke forth with the first
gush of true maternal love; for a moment she forgot herself and held
out her hand.
"Oh, Fred! I hate to give you up altogether; but, then, I really am
not your mother. Don't you see it in his bright hair? in those
beautiful eyes?--we ought to have known he was my son by his face.
But, only think of that horrid woman's bringing him up among all those
low people; but she could not make him like them. There is a medium in
blood, you see. But, when, you took so naturally to our life; really,
I don't see my way clear yet!"
"But won't you speak to Isabel, mother?"
"Isabel! dear me, I should not know her. How do you do, my dear?
Certainly, it's very proper and right that you should marry Fred, now!
It's quite like a romance. Isn't it? Of course, all my objections are
removed."
"And my vow," whispered Isabel; "thank God, we are as free as two wild
birds!"
"And as poor," answered Frederick, smiling, while a shade of sadness
settled on Joseph Esmond's face.
"Not quite so bad as that," said Judge Sharp, stepping forward with a
blackened and scorched paper in his hand, "Young man, on this your
common birth-day, you have attained legal manhood. By Mr. Farnham's
will, which has but lately come into my hands, I find myself called
upon to resign my guardianship over you both; for--with the exception
of his widow's dower, and ten thousand dollars left to this young
lady, Isabel Chester, with direction that she should be brought up and
educated in his own family--Mr. Farnham's property was divided equally
between his own son and the son of Joseph and Anna Esmond. I rejoice
at this, and congratulate you, young man. You have each proved worthy,
and God has blessed you."
A flush of beautiful joy drove the gloom from Esmond's face. He arose
and held out his hand.
"Farnham! Farnham! wish me joy. You can wish me joy, now."
Every heart rose warmly as the young men shook hands, and all eyes
were so blinded with happy tears, that no one observed Mrs. Farnham as
she shrunk cowering in a corner of the room. Even Judge Sharp avoided
looking that way, and Salina planted herself before the pallid woman,
expanding her scant skirts, till they swelled out like a half-open
umbrella, in a prompt effort to screen that guilty form.
"Young men!" and as he spoke Judge Sharp assumed a look of more than
ordinary dignity. "Thank God, that in this great change, he left you
to the influences which have best developed the powers within you.
Now, go forth, my children, with the fair wives you have chosen, and
always remember, that the trials of early life should give strength
and power to manhood."
THE END.