What the buried archives are to the archaeologist, the trunkful of old
letters is to the novelist. But before those light-giving documents are
brought forth, a little family history should be detailed as preface.
In the year 1872 the Civil War had been more generally forgotten in
the North than in the South. In the State of Massachusetts, however,
a goodly circle of antislavery agitators still kept up the fight in
favor of the black man. The Fourteenth Amendment had not then been
made, nor those celebrated discussions which fixed its interpretation
and application; but the reconstruction of the Southern States still
left plenty of ground for bitter speech and feeling.
Prominent among that circle and among the old Boston families of
that day was the widow of a man who had literally given his life to
the antislavery cause, for he had died during the War of overwork
upon an antislavery journal. His widow belonged to a family that for
two hundred years or more had been prominent in state and national
affairs. When her husband died and left her and a half-grown daughter
almost penniless among a wealthy kindred, she found little or no
difficulty in getting along; for their pride in the editorial victim
was great, and she had been always a family favorite.
But if the mother was everywhere sought, her daughter Charlotte found
a less ready welcome. A tall, superb beauty, singularly cold at times
and reserved, at others fiercely vehement, she was as utterly unlike
the descendant of a staid New England family as can be imagined. It
is regrettable that she found little favor in the family eyes; and in
the year 1872 she came to an out and out rupture with all her kindred
by eloping with Mountjoy Ponsonby, a Marylander, a Roman Catholic,
and an irreconcilable son of slave-holding parents.
Mrs. K---- took to her bed and died of chagrin. Four years later the
unhappy girl followed her mother to the grave, leaving behind her a
baby daughter six months old.
Of that marriage so soon ended, the best and the worst that can be
said is that it was unhappy. The two undisciplined natures who had
defied tradition, family sentiment, religious training, and political
inheritance for the sake of each other, had not the patience to work
out their common happiness when the infatuation which had drawn them
together died, as all such sudden and violent emotions must.
When Mrs. Ponsonby turned her back on life and on an impoverished
Southern home where her New England thrift had struggled ceaselessly
with the indolence and sluggish ways of a slave-holding household,
it was after almost all possible recrimination had been exhausted
over religion, politics, family inheritance, and ideals of life. Her
husband, having buried her with due ceremony and observance in the
Maryland family vaults, betook himself to travel, leaving the child
to be cared for by a distant female relative. When little Charlotte
was four, the relative died, and, as an ultimate act of defiance to
his wife's kindred, Ponsonby placed his daughter in a Roman Catholic
convent.
There the little girl remained till her fourteenth year. In that
period, she saw her father some six or eight times. Their interviews
were constrained affairs, for Mountjoy Ponsonby was not a man of
domestic or affectionate nature, and the child of the wife with whom he
had quarrelled bitterly made little appeal to him. He usually gave his
daughter much good advice, found her exceedingly docile, but equally
difficult, and was always embarrassed by an unspoken appeal in her
nature which he dumbly resented. He looked forward with repugnance
and dread to the days when she could be no longer stuffed away in a
convent, and he rather hoped that she would feel herself religiously
called upon to stay there.
Like many other men, he had formed the habit of looking on himself
as immortal, so that when he was instantly killed by being thrown
from his horse, he had made no provision for his child's future. On
his own side of the family there was no near kindred; and the Boston
relatives instantly put in a claim for the custody of little Charlotte.
The man who was most actively interested in the little girl's future
was one Cornelius Spencer, a dry, hard-working, quiet man, capable of
loving with singular intensity and equally capable of concealing his
emotions. He had paid a quiet court to the beautiful Charlotte K----,
and family gossip said that he took her elopement very seriously;
but it was all conjecture, for he kept his own counsel. A year later,
he married Martha Winston, her cousin, a lady who, furthermore said
family gossip, had been in love with him for several years.
The Spencer marriage turned out well; how nearly that well may be
translated happily, who can say? At least, Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius
Spencer were a decorous couple, he given to amassing this world's
goods, she devoted to a thrifty oversight of their expenditures
and to a calm enjoyment of their prosperity. Two daughters came to
them, handsome children whose education from the first was up to the
strictest standards of conservative Boston.
There was much sage wagging of heads among the Boston kin when
Cornelius Spencer came forward as the potential guardian of the orphan
immured in the convent. But though they conjectured again, Mrs. Spencer
kept her own counsel as her husband had kept his years before. Of
course, said the kinship, it was a bitter pill to her. Charlotte K----
had always outshone her in brains, in wit, in beauty. She had been
proud to marry the man whom Charlotte had refused; and to find that
man, eighteen years later, still cherishing sentimental memories
of her rival, determined to make himself a second father to that
rival's child,--ah, well, Martha was a remarkable woman to bear it
all so quietly!
It happened that, on the day the young girl appeared in charge of the
nun who brought her North, a very observant lady was calling upon
Mrs. Cornelius Spencer. The lady was the wife of an army officer,
and had a taste for letter-writing, in fact, felt that letter-writing
was her only gift. A few extracts from her epistle to her husband
will throw some light upon Charlotte Ponsonby's girlhood experiences.
"--I have been visiting about for days among the K---- kin. They
are as magnificently satisfied with themselves as ever, take
themselves very seriously, are as proud of their money-making
powers as of their blue blood; really it's wonderful how they all
make money, and talk, as they have always done, from a very much
higher plane than they really live on.
"Among others, Martha Spencer asked me to luncheon, and I went
there this morning. Really, Cornelius must have made oodles of
money. The mere household accessories were simple enough; but the
books, the pictures, and the curios were a joy. I feasted my soul,
and I wished for you, my dear, to enjoy it with me.
"But I'll talk of those things to you later. What I want to tell
you about now is an incident that I am afraid may slip away from
me, and I want to describe it while my impressions are fresh,
"You remember I wrote you, in a previous letter, about the lawsuit
and how old Dry-as-dust Cornelius has a real spark of romance
in him after all, and of how he has disinterred his old love's
child from a convent where she was to have been buried alive. It
was my happy fate to see the sequel this morning.
"Martha and I were sitting together just before lunch, when the
bell rang. 'I think that must be the little relative whom we are
expecting,' said Martha, and a second later the butler ushered
in a nun and a fourteen-year-old girl.
"I wish you could have seen Martha's greeting! It was exactly
what she would have given a woman of the world, paying a morning
call. She was concentrated extract of courtesy and breeding. The
child, who was evidently nervous and expectant of a warmer welcome
was instantly chilled by it. But she rose to it! She rose to it
magnificently! She has rather fine eyes, her mother's eyes as
I remember them, and a self-possessed manner for a child of her
age. I tried to gush over her a bit, but she would have none of
me. Having been rebuffed by her hostess, she had no intention of
allowing an undetermined factor to the situation to make amends
to her.
"The nun would not remain, and departed immediately after formally
handing over her charge. She kissed Charlotte (the child is named
for her mother), and I rather fancied that, in spite of her cold
welcome, the child is not reluctant to enter on a more brilliant
life than the conventical one. At any rate, she did not shed
any tears.
"Charlotte was sent upstairs with a maid to make her toilette for
luncheon. 'Your cousins regret not being here to welcome you,'
said Martha suavely, 'but they went out to the country place of
a friend for a day's skating. They will see you at dinner.'
"'I am very glad they did not change their plans on my account,'
said my little nun that might have been.
"Cornelius came home for luncheon and was stiffer than Martha. He
was self-conscious, that was apparent. We had the most perfect
luncheon imaginable, but though Martha prides herself on her
heating arrangements and their temperatures never vary a degree,
I felt as if the outside air had crept through the whole house.
"I am sorry for that girl from the bottom of my heart. Martha
hates the sight of her, and the girl knew it before she had been
twenty minutes in the house. She will have food and dress and
every material luxury dealt out to her as lavishly as it is to
Martha's own girls; but of good-will, kindness, human affection,
not a drop. Instead, she will receive a courtesy measured by
the most approved social standards. She will never be allowed
to forget for one moment that it is given from a high sense of
duty, and not from any sense of affection. I am not sure that
Cornelius has done the child a kindness. She might have fared
better in a boarding-school. At the same time, I have a great
deal of sympathy for Martha. I shouldn't be at all nice about it,
you know, if you raked up a dead and gone sweetheart's child and
established her among our brood."
Within a few weeks after the writing of this epistle, Mrs. Spencer
expressed herself to an elderly relative perched in a very old colonial
home among the hills of Vermont.
"Charlotte's little daughter is now with us. She is a very reserved
child with beautiful manners--I suppose convent training does
give that--and, her teachers think, has an exceptional mind. We
have had private teachers for her this year because, though her
elementary training is fair, she is greatly lacking in general
information, though she has a curious accumulation of Roman
Catholic religious lore.
"She has a great deal of personality for a child of her age, which
I have respected. I find myself constantly shrinking, however,
from some undercurrent of feeling which she doesn't express. She
gets on very well with my two girls, but they don't understand
her any more than I do. Of course, she is treated exactly as they
are--I really wouldn't get one a hair ribbon without buying its
match for Charlotte.
"For a convent-reared girl, she is not so difficult to deal with as
might be. I send her to church every Sunday in the brougham with
the parlor maid, who happens to be of her faith; and I called on
the parish priest and commended her to his fatherly mercies. He
is a rather robust person, clearly of Irish peasant origin,
and speaks with a very decided brogue. She is plainly growing a
bit fastidious about him, and I am inclined to feel that she is
none too deeply enamored of her church. She has a curious gift
of worldliness for a child brought up in a convent."
Eight years later Mrs. Spencer penned another brief note to this same
elderly relative's daughter.
"I suppose it would be asking too much of you to run down to
Smith and see Charlotte take her degree. I can't go--Natalie's
engagement is just on--and somebody ought to appear from the
family. She takes high honors, I understand. She wrote me a very
pretty little note, saying it wasn't to be expected of any of us
to get up, but I can see she is hurt. Do go if you can."
Six weeks later in that same year, the military lady found herself
at a very quiet and exclusive resort in the White Mountains, and once
more delivered herself to her husband of many impressions.
"You remember that incident I told you of some years ago of seeing
Charlotte K's daughter engulfed in the Spencer household. Well,
they are all here for a brief stay, Martha engrossed in her
two girls. Natalie's engagement to young X---- of the Navy
has been announced. Charlotte Ponsonby is really a magnificent
creature--from a woman's standpoint, that is. But the outcome of
the affair is just what might have been expected. Somehow they
have mortally wounded her, and to protect herself from them and
their curiosity she has built a wall between herself and the
whole world. I tried to cross it, and was most delicately and
effectively rebuffed. She is the most solitary girl I have ever
known, and yet she is not morbid. She moves among us in the most
self-possessed, unasking spirit that was ever held by a girl of
twenty-two. She is remarkably well bred, quite at ease outwardly,
and is altogether too clever to please men--who are dreadfully shy
of her, though they speak of her admiringly. I would not have you
think that her cleverness is of that cheap type which sharpens
its wits on others, and prides itself on its brilliancy. She is
not in the least talkative, but she gives you the feeling of one
who is weighing, sifting, analyzing, judging; who is using her
brain to its best purposes at all times.
"The pathetic part of it all is that she is playing up to a role
that somebody--I don't know what idiot--assigned her. I find
among all the kindred and all the family acquaintance the general
opinion that Charlotte has no emotions, nothing but a brain;
and the poor child is nothing but a bundle of emotions that she
is desperately trying to conceal. I understand her perfectly. I
never was so sorry for anyone in my life--anyone in our condition,
that is. She has been tagged a girl of brains, and it has somehow
been impressed upon her that, if she shows any feminine weakness,
she will disgrace herself. So there she is, on her intellectual
tiptoes, striving to conceal a very human disposition to come
down on her heels, exiling herself from all that girlhood prizes.
"Of course, you dear old goose, you are saying to yourself, 'Why
don't you put her wise, then?' My dear, she has analyzed it all
just as clearly as I have. She knows what is going on. She merely
hasn't the courage to break through the convention and, on the
whole, I don't wonder at it. It takes more courage to fight the
accepted conception of oneself than it does to do any other sort
of fighting in the world. Charlotte Ponsonby is a victim of the
Spencer stupidity and of her own timidity and sensitiveness. There
has grown up an impression that Charlotte doesn't care for dancing;
and night after night she goes off to her room, pretending a
desire to read when her heart is in her toes, where a normal
girl's heart should be. If there is an expedition of any sort,
Charlotte is always handed over to some elderly fossil because
she is so intelligent and serious, and so entertaining to old
gentlemen. If a man pays her the least attention, everybody notes
it (and you know we pride ourselves an our breeding too); and so
much interest, sympathy, and, yes, my dear, damnable curiosity,
is openly shown in the matter that the girl's pride is outraged,
and in sheer self-defence she snubs her admirer incontinently.
"She lives and has always lived, as nearly as I can see,
utterly without intimate companionship, confidence, or any of
that wholesome dependence that belongs to girlhood. There is
something infinitely pathetic in her isolation, which, much as I
should like to, I dare not invade. There is a pride in life born
of indigence as there is the pride of wealth. Charlotte Ponsonby
is armored in the pride born of spiritual indigence. Her soul is
hungering and thirsting for that thing for which all the world
has decided she cares nothing. Mark my words, my dear, in the end,
tragedy will come of it."
It was at the close of their stay in the mountains that Mrs. Spencer
again unburdened herself to the Vermont relative.
"What do you think Charlotte is now bent on? She wants to be a
trained nurse. I have felt for a long time that she had something
revolutionary in her mind. It doesn't matter to me particularly,
but Cornelius is grieved to the heart. However, we have no right
to coerce her, and financial independence seems to be the one
thing on which her mind is fixed."
Three years later she wrote again:
"Charlotte has finished her training and is going to the
Philippines. She came in from New York last week to break the
news. I said little, and Cornelius said less. But we have talked
it over, and have decided that she must judge for herself. I
don't feel satisfied with the results of our care for Charlotte,
and I don't know where the blame lies, but I do feel that she
cherishes some bitterness of feeling in her heart, and that she
is very unhappy.
"Something in her nature wears clearer as she grows older, some
ingrained romanticism which we did not suspect, and which repels
me. However, it is too late to worry about now. She has taken
her life into her own hands, and has decreed that it shall lie
apart from ours; and I, for one, am thankful."
To these may be added a final word from Miss Ponsonby herself, written,
on her wedding eve after her return from the Luneta.
"My dear Aunt:
"This is the last letter I shall write you for some time, for
to-morrow I am going to be married, and shall leave Manila for
a remote island where the opportunity for correspondence is small.
"The man I am going to marry, whose name is Martin Collingwood,
is engaged in pearl-fishing in the seas south of Manila. He is a
man, I believe, with the money-making gift. However that is not the
reason that I am marrying him. With me it is absolutely a matter
of the heart. I am marrying him because, as nearly as I can see,
he is the one human being who has ever loved me in this world,
and because I cannot live life without love.
"It is hardly necessary to say that I am sacrificing my ambitions
in this matter. To a woman brought up as I have been, a dependent,
a brilliant marriage would represent the most successful thing,
the most nearly compensating thing, that life could offer. It
has not come to me, however, and I am making the best I can of
what has offered.
"You may wonder why this frankness at the end of the silence
which has always existed between us. It is because my only hope in
the future is based on the fact that, at last, I have courage to
declare myself. To guard my every thought and feeling from your
curiosity and criticism, I have separated myself from all the
world, and in the beginning unknowingly, but in the end with full
knowledge, have walked down a path which has ended here. I will
not hamper myself in my new life by even the memory of my old
cowardice. You may call me weak, call me sentimental, foolish,
romantic, call me all the things which for years you have been
trying to discover in me, and for which you have sought in vain
beneath the mask I wore--I am going to have my share of living.
"This is not written in bitterness toward you. I am grateful
for all the care and the money lavished upon me, and I realize
fully the sacrifice that you made in receiving me into your home
and in treating me, as you did, with perfect justice. It was
magnificent. I am simply one of those miserable beings who have
come into this world unwelcome, born to be a worry and a trial to
someone, and I have taken the only means I knew to escape from it.
"Tell Uncle Cornelius that I am not ungrateful to him. Some day
I'll write you again. For the present I want to put every memory
of the past out of my life. If the day ever comes when I can go
back to it without its influencing my life as it has always done,
I'll write again.
"Yours gratefully,
"Charlotte Ponsonby."