ESTHER
_A Novel_
Published in 1884 by Henry Holt and Company
_Chapter I_
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning
of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery,
beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught
an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and
geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow
maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if
cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies
and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St.
John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over
the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came
in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of
glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers
of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes
looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would
have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon,
had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure.
Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the
world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he
could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more
ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this
new temple to-day a perceptible interest in religion. One might almost
have said that religion seemed to be a matter of concern. The audience
wore a look of interest, and, even after their first gaze of admiration
and whispered criticism at the splendors of their new church, when at
length the clergyman entered to begin the service, a ripple of
excitement swept across the field of bonnets until there was almost a
murmur as of rustling cornfields within the many colored walls of St.
John's.
In a remote pew, hidden under a gallery of the transept, two persons
looked on with especial interest. The number of strangers who crowded in
after them forced them to sit closely together, and their low whispers
of comment were unheard by their neighbors. Before the service began
they talked in a secular tone.
"Wharton's window is too high-toned," said the man.
"You all said it would be like Aladdin's," murmured the woman.
"Yes, but he throws away his jewels," rejoined the man. "See the big
prophet over the arch; he looks as though he wanted to come down--and I
think he ought."
"Did Michael Angelo ever take lessons of Mr. Wharton?" asked the woman
seriously, looking up at the figures high above the pulpit.
"He was only a prophet," answered her companion, and, looking in another
direction, next asked:
"Who is the angel of Paradise, in the dove-colored wings, sliding up the
main aisle?"
"That! O, you know her! It is Miss Leonard. She is lovely, but she is
only an angel of Paris."
"I never saw her before in my life," he replied; "but I know her bonnet
was put on in the Lord's honor for the first time this morning."
"Women should take their bonnets off at the church door, as Mussulmen do
their shoes," she answered.
"Don't turn Mahommedan, Esther. To be a Puritan is bad enough. The
bonnets match the decorations."
"Pity the transepts are not finished!" she continued, gazing up at the
bare scaffolding opposite.
"You are lucky to have any thing finished," he rejoined. "Since Hazard
got here every thing is turned upside down; all the plans are changed.
He and Wharton have taken the bit in their teeth, and the church
committee have got to pay for whatever damage is done."
"Has Mr. Hazard voice enough to fill the church?" she asked.
"Watch him, and see how well he'll do it. Here he comes, and he will hit
the right pitch on his first word."
The organ stopped, the clergyman appeared, and the talkers were silent
until the litany ended and the organ began again. Under the prolonged
rustle of settling for the sermon, more whispers passed.
"He is all eyes," murmured Esther; and it was true that at this
distance the preacher seemed to be made up of two eyes and a voice, so
slight and delicate was his frame. Very tall, slender and dark, his
thin, long face gave so spiritual an expression to his figure that the
great eyes seemed to penetrate like his clear voice to every soul within
their range.
"Good art!" muttered her companion.
"We are too much behind the scenes," replied she.
"It is a stage, like any other," he rejoined; "there should be an
_entre-acte_ and drop-scene. Wharton could design one with a last
judgment."
"He would put us into it, George, and we should be among the wicked."
"I am a martyr," answered George shortly.
The clergyman now mounted his pulpit and after a moment's pause said in
his quietest manner and clearest voice:
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
An almost imperceptible shiver passed through Esther's figure.
"Wait! he will slip in the humility later," muttered George.
On the contrary, the young preacher seemed bent on letting no trace of
humility slip into his first sermon. Nothing could be simpler than his
manner, which, if it had a fault, sinned rather on the side of plainness
and monotony than of rhetoric, but he spoke with the air of one who had
a message to deliver which he was more anxious to give as he received
than to add any thing of his own; he meant to repeat it all without an
attempt to soften it. He took possession of his flock with a general
advertisement that he owned every sheep in it, white or black, and to
show that there could be no doubt on the matter, he added a general
claim to right of property in all mankind and the universe. He did this
in the name and on behalf of the church universal, but there was
self-assertion in the quiet air with which he pointed out the nature of
his title, and then, after sweeping all human thought and will into his
strong-box, shut down the lid with a sharp click, and bade his audience
kneel.
The sermon dealt with the relations of religion to society. It began by
claiming that all being and all thought rose by slow gradations to
God,--ended in Him, for Him--existed only through Him and because of
being His.
The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the
plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of
Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the
materialism of to-day, were all emanations of divine thought, doing
their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them
all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity,
but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends. The
preacher then went on to criticise the attitude of religion towards
science. "If there is still a feeling of hostility between them," he
said, "it is no longer the fault of religion. There have been times when
the church seemed afraid, but she is so no longer. Analyze, dissect, use
your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is
reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made
clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once
knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind
all thought and matter only one central idea,--that idea which the
church has never ceased to embody,--I AM! Science like religion kneels
before this mystery; it can carry itself back only to this simple
consciousness of existence. I AM is the starting point and goal of
metaphysics and logic, but the church alone has pointed out from the
beginning that this starting-point is not human but divine. The
philosopher says--I am, and the church scouts his philosophy. She
answers:--No! you are NOT, you have no existence of your own. You were
and are and ever will be only a part of the supreme I AM, of which the
church is the emblem."
In this symbolic expression of his right of property in their souls and
bodies, perhaps the preacher rose a little above the heads of his
audience. Most of his flock were busied with a kind of speculation so
foreign to that of metaphysics that they would have been puzzled to
explain what was meant by Descartes' famous COGITO ERGO SUM, on which
the preacher laid so much stress. They would have preferred to put the
fact of their existence on almost any other experience in life, as that
"I have five millions," or, "I am the best-dressed woman in the
church,--therefore I am somebody." The fact of self-consciousness would
not have struck them as warranting a claim even to a good social
position, much less to a share in omnipotence; they knew the trait only
as a sign of bad manners. Yet there were at least two persons among the
glorified chrysanthemums of St. John's Garden this day, who as the
sermon closed and the organ burst out again, glanced at each other with
a smile as though they had enjoyed their lecture.
"Good!" said the man. "He takes hold."
"I hope he believes it all," said his companion.
"Yes, he has put his life into the idea," replied the man. "Even at
college he would have sent us all off to the stake with a sweet smile,
for the love of Christ and the glory of the English Episcopal Church."
The crowd soon began to pour slowly out of the building and the two
observers were swept along with the rest until at length they found
themselves outside, and strolled down the avenue. A voice from behind
stopped them.
"Esther!" it called.
Esther turned and greeted the caller as aunt. She was a woman of about
fifty, still rather handsome, but with features to which time had given
an expression of character and will that harmonized only with a manner a
little abrupt and decided. She had the air of a woman who knew her own
mind and commonly had her own way.
"Well, Esther, I am glad to see you taking George to church. Has he
behaved himself?"
"You are wrong again, Aunt Sarah," said George; "it is I who have been
taking Esther to church. I thought it was worth seeing."
"Church is always worth seeing, George, and I hope your friend Mr.
Hazard's sermon has done you good."
"It did me good to see Wharton there," answered George; "he looked as
though it were a first representation, and he were in a stage box.
Hazard and he ought to have appeared before the curtain, hand in hand,
and made little speeches. I felt like calling them out."
"What did you think of it, Esther?" asked her aunt.
"I thought it very entertaining, Aunt Sarah. I felt like a butterfly in
a tulip bed. Mr. Hazard's eyes are wonderful."
"I shall never get you two to be reverential," said her aunt sternly.
"It was the best sermon I ever heard, and I would like to hear you
answer it, George, and make your answer as little scientific as you
can."
"Aunt Sarah, I never answered any one in my life, not even you, or
Esther, or the man who said that my fossil bird was a crocodile. Why do
you want me to answer him?"
"Because I don't believe you can."
"I can't. I am a professor of paleontology at the college, and I answer
questions about bones. You must get my colleague who does the
metaphysics to answer Hazard's sermon. Hazard and I have had it out
fifty times, and discussed the whole subject till night reeled, but we
never got within shouting distance of each other. He might as well have
stood on the earth, and I on the nearest planet, and bawled across. So
we have given it up."
"You mean that you were beaten," rejoined his aunt. "I am glad you feel
it, though I always knew it was so. After all, Mr. Hazard has got more
saints on his church walls than he will ever see in his audience, though
not such pretty ones. I never saw so many lovely faces and dresses
together. Esther, how is your father to-day?"
"Not very well, aunt. He wants to see you. Come home with us and help us
to amuse him."
So talking, all three walked along the avenue to 42d Street, and turning
down it, at length entered one of the houses about half way between the
avenues. Up-stairs in a sunny room fitted up as a library and large
enough to be handsome, they found the owner, William Dudley, a man of
sixty or thereabouts, sitting in an arm-chair before the fire, trying to
read a foreign review in which he took no interest. He moved with an
appearance of effort, as though he were an invalid, but his voice was
strong and his manner cheerful.
"I hoped you would all come. This is an awful moment. Tell me instantly,
Sarah; is St. Stephen a success?"
"Immense! St. Stephen and St. Wharton too. The loveliest clergyman, the
sweetest church, the highest-toned sermon and the lowest-toned walls,"
said she. "Even George owns that he has no criticisms to make."
"Aunt Sarah tells the loftiest truth, Uncle William," said the
professor; "every Christian emblem about the church is superlatively
correct, but paleontologically it is a fraud. Wharton and Hazard did the
emblems, and I supplied them with antediluvian beasts which were all
right when I drew them, but Wharton has played the devil with them, and
I don't believe he knows the difference between a saurian and a crab. I
could not recognize one of my own offspring."
"And how did it suit you, Esther?"
"I am charmed," replied his daughter. "Only it certainly does come just
a little near being an opera-house. Mr. Hazard looks horribly like
Meyerbeer's Prophet. He ordered us about in a fine tenor voice, with his
eyes, and told us that we belonged to him, and if we did not behave
ourselves he would blow up the church and us in it. I thought every
moment we should see his mother come out of the front pews, and have a
scene with him. If the organ had played the march, the effect would have
been complete, but I felt there was something wanting."
"It was the sexton," said the professor; "he ought to have had a
medieval costume. I must tell Wharton to-night to invent one for him.
Hazard has asked me to come round to his rooms, because he thinks I am
an unprejudiced observer and will tell him the exact truth. Now what am
I to say?"
"Tell him," said the aunt, "that he looked like a Christian martyr
defying the beasts in the amphitheater, and George, you are one of them.
Between you and your Uncle William I wonder how Esther and I keep any
religion at all."
"It is not enough to save you, Aunt Sarah," replied the professor. "You
might just as well go with us, for if the Church is half right, you
haven't a chance."
"Just now I must go with my husband, who is not much better than you,"
she replied. "He must have his luncheon, church or no church. Good-by."
So she departed, notifying Esther that the next day there was to be at
her house a meeting of the executive committee of the children's
hospital, which Esther must be careful to attend.
When she was out of the room the professor turned to his uncle and said:
"Seriously, Uncle William, I wish you knew Stephen Hazard. He is a
pleasant fellow in or out of the pulpit, and would amuse you. If you and
Esther will come to tea some afternoon at my rooms, I will get Hazard
and Wharton and Aunt Sarah there to meet you."
"Will he preach at me?" asked Mr. Dudley.
"Never in his life," replied the professor warmly. "He is the most
rational, unaffected parson in the world. He likes fun as much as you or
any other man, and is interested in every thing."
"I will come if Esther will let me," said Mr. Dudley. "What have you to
say about it, Esther?"
"I don't think it would hurt you, father. George's building has an
elevator."
"I didn't mean that, you watch-dog. I meant to ask whether you wanted to
go to George's tea party?"
"I should like it of all things. Mr. Hazard won't hurt me, and I always
like to meet Mr. Wharton."
"Then I will ask both of them this evening for some day next week or the
week after, and will let you know," said George.
"Is he easily shocked?" asked Mr. Dudley. "Am I to do the old-school
Puritan with him, or what?"
"Stephen Hazard," replied the professor, "is as much a man of the world
as you or I. He is only thirty-five; we were at college together, took
our degrees together, went abroad at the same time, and to the same
German university. He had then more money than I, and traveled longer,
went to the East, studied a little of every thing, lived some time in
Paris, where he discovered Wharton, and at last some few years ago came
home to take a church at Cincinnati, where he made himself a power. I
thought he made a mistake in leaving there to come to St. John's, and
wrote him so. I thought if he came here he would find that he had no
regular community to deal with but just an Arab horde, and that it was
nonsense to talk of saving the souls of New Yorkers who have no souls to
be saved. But he thought it his duty to take the offer. Aunt Sarah hit
it right when she called him a Christian martyr in the amphitheater. At
college, we used to call him St. Stephen. He had this same idea that the
church was every thing, and that every thing belonged to the church.
When I told him that he was a common nuisance, and that I had to work
for him like a church-warden, he laughed as though it were a joke, and
seriously told me it was all right, and he didn't mind my skepticism at
all. I know he was laughing at me this morning, when he made me go to
church for the first time in ten years to hear that sermon which not
twenty people there understood."
"One always has to pay for one's friend's hobbies," said Mr. Dudley. "I
am glad he has had a success. If we keep a church we ought to do it in
the best style. What will you give me for my pew?"
"I never sat in a worse," growled Strong.
"I'll not change it then," said Mr. Dudley. "I'll make Esther use it to
mortify her pride."
"Better make it over to the poor of the parish," said the professor;
"you will get no thanks for it even from them."
Mr. Dudley laughed as though it were no affair of his, and in fact he
never sat in his pew, and never expected to do so; he had no taste for
church-going. A lawyer in moderate practice, with active interest in
public affairs, when the civil war broke out he took a commission as
captain in a New York regiment, and, after distinguishing himself, was
brought home, a colonel, with a bullet through his body and a saber cut
across his head. He recovered his health, or as much of it as a man can
expect to recover after such treatment, and went back to the law, but
coming by inheritance into a property large enough to make him
indifferent to his profession, and having an only child whose mother was
long since dead, he amused the rest of his life by spoiling this girl.
Esther was now twenty-five years old, and for fifteen years had been
absolute mistress of her father's house. Her Aunt Sarah, known in New
York as Mrs. John Murray of 53d Street, was the only person of whom she
was a little--a very little--afraid. Of her Cousin George she was not in
the least afraid, although George Strong spoke with authority in the
world when he cared to speak at all. He was rich, and his professorship
was little more to him than a way of spending money. He had no parents,
and no relations besides the Dudleys and the Murrays. Alone in the
world, George Strong looked upon himself as having in Esther a younger
sister whom he liked, and a sort of older sister, whom he also liked, in
his Aunt Sarah.
When, after lunching with the Dudleys, Professor Strong walked down
Fifth Avenue to his club, he looked, to the thousand people whom he
passed, like what he was, an intelligent man, with a figure made for
action, an eye that hated rest, and a manner naturally sympathetic. His
forehead was so bald as to give his face a look of strong character,
which a dark beard rather helped to increase. He was a popular fellow,
known as George by whole gangs of the roughest miners in Nevada, where
he had worked for years as a practical geologist, and it would have been
hard to find in America, Europe, or Asia, a city in which some one would
not have smiled at the mention of his name, and asked where George was
going to turn up next.
He kept his word that evening with his friend Hazard. At nine o'clock he
was at the house, next door to St. John's church, where the new
clergyman was trying to feel himself at home. In a large library, with
book-cases to the ceiling, and books lying in piles on the floor; with
pictures, engravings and etchings leaning against the books and the
walls, and every sort of literary encumbrance scattered in the way of
heedless feet; in the midst of confusion confounded, Mr. Hazard was
stretched on a sofa trying to read, but worn out by fatigue and
excitement. Though his chaos had not settled into order, it was easy to
read his character from his surroundings. The books were not all
divinity. There were classics of every kind, even to a collection of
Eastern literature; a mass of poetry in all languages; not a few novels;
and what was most conspicuous, an elaborate collection of illustrated
works on art, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Medieval, Mexican, Japanese,
Indian, and whatever else had come in his way. Add to this a shelf of
music, and then--construct the tall, slender, large-eyed, thin-nosed,
dark-haired figure lying exhausted on the sofa.
He rose to greet Strong with a laugh like a boy, and cried: "Well,
skeptic, how do the heathen rage?"
"The heathen are all right," replied Strong. "The orthodox are the
ragers."
"Never mind the orthodox," said Hazard. "I will look after them. Tell me
about the Pagans. I felt like St. Paul preaching at Athens the God whom
they ignorantly worshiped."
"I took with me the sternest little Pagan I know, my cousin, Esther
Dudley," said Strong; "and the only question she asked was whether you
believed it all."
"She hit the mark at the first shot," answered Hazard. "I must make them
all ask that question. Tell me about your cousin. Who is she? Her name
sounds familiar."
"As familiar as Hawthorne," replied Strong. "One of his tales is called
after it. Her father comes from a branch of the old Puritan Dudleys, and
took a fancy to the name when he met it in Hawthorne's story. You never
heard of them before because you have been always away from New York,
and when you were here they happened to be away. You know that half a
dozen women run this city, and my aunt, Mrs. Murray, is one of the
half-dozen. She is training Esther to take her place when she retires. I
want you to know my Uncle Dudley and my cousin. I am going to have a
little tea-party for them in my rooms, and you must help me with it."
Mr. Hazard asked only to have it put off until the week after the next
because of his engagements, and hardly had they fixed the day when
another caller appeared.
He was a man of their own age, so quiet and subdued in manner, and so
delicate in feature, that he would have been unnoticed in any ordinary
group, and shoved aside into a corner. He seemed to face life with an
effort; his light-brown eyes had an uneasy look as though they wanted to
rest on something that should be less hard and real than what they saw.
He was not handsome; his mouth was a little sensual; his yellowish beard
was ragged. He was apt to be silent until his shyness wore off, when he
became a rapid, nervous talker, full of theories and schemes, which he
changed from one day to another, but which were always quite complete
and convincing for the moment. At times he had long fits of moodiness
and would not open his mouth for days. At other times he sought society
and sat up all night talking, planning, discussing, drinking, smoking,
living on bread and cheese or whatever happened to be within reach, and
sleeping whenever he happened to feel in the humor for it. Rule or
method he had none, and his friends had for years given up the attempt
to control him. They took it for granted that he would soon kill himself
with his ill-regulated existence. Hazard thought that his lungs would
give way, and Strong insisted that his brain was the weak spot, and no
one ventured to hope that he would long hold out, but he lived on in
defiance of them.
"Good evening, Wharton," said the clergyman. "I have been trying to find
out from Strong what the heathen think of me. Tell us now the art view
of the case. How are you satisfied?"
"Tell me what you were sketching in church," said Strong. "Was it not
the new martyrdom of St. Stephen?"
"No," answered Wharton quietly. "It was my own. I found I could not look
up; I knew how bad my own work was, and I could not stand seeing it; so
I drew my own martyrdom rather than make a scandal by leaving the
church."
"Did you hear my sermon?" asked the clergyman.
"I don't remember," answered Wharton vaguely; "what was it about?"
Strong and Hazard broke into a laugh which roused him to the energy of
self-defense.
"I never could listen," he said. "It is a slow and stupid faculty. An
artist's business is only to see, and to-day I could see nothing but my
own things which are all bad. The whole church is bad. It is not
altogether worth a bit of Japanese enamel that I have brought round here
this evening to show Strong."
He searched first in one pocket, then in another, until he found what he
wanted in the pocket of his overcoat, and a warm discussion at once
began between him and Strong, who declared that he had a better piece.
"Mine was given me by a Daimio, in Kiusiu," said Strong. "It is the best
old bit you ever saw. Come round to my rooms a week from to-morrow at
five o'clock in the afternoon, and I will show you all my new japs. The
Dudleys are coming to see them, and my aunt Mrs. Murray, and Hazard has
promised to come."
"I saw you had Miss Dudley with you at church this morning," said
Wharton, still absorbed in study of his enamel, and quite unconscious of
his host's evident restlessness.
"Ah! then you could see Miss Dudley!" cried the clergyman, who could not
forgive the abrupt dismissal of his own affairs by the two men, and was
eager to bring the talk back to his church.
"I can always see Miss Dudley," said Wharton quietly.
"Why?" asked Hazard.
"She is interesting," replied the painter. "She has a style of her own,
and I never can quite make up my mind whether to like it or not."
"It is the first time I ever knew you to hesitate before a style," said
Hazard.
"I hesitate before every thing American," replied Wharton, beginning to
show a shade of interest in what he was talking of. "I don't know--you
don't know--and I never yet met any man who could tell me, whether
American types are going to supplant the old ones, or whether they are
to come to nothing for want of ideas. Miss Dudley is one of the most
marked American types I ever saw."
"What are the signs of the most marked American type you ever saw?"
asked Hazard.
"In the first place, she has a bad figure, which she makes answer for a
good one. She is too slight, too thin; she looks fragile, willowy, as
the cheap novels call it, as though you could break her in halves like a
switch. She dresses to suit her figure and sometimes overdoes it. Her
features are imperfect. Except her ears, her voice, and her eyes which
have a sort of brown depth like a trout brook, she has no very good
points."
"Then why do you hesitate?" asked Strong, who was not entirely pleased
with this cool estimate of his cousin's person.
"There is the point where the subtlety comes in," replied the painter.
"Miss Dudley interests me. I want to know what she can make of life. She
gives one the idea of a lightly-sparred yacht in mid-ocean; unexpected;
you ask yourself what the devil she is doing there. She sails gayly
along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather
coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries to
paint, but she is only a second rate amateur and will never be any thing
more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my word I
would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows without an
effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand whatever is
said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have the same
peculiarity. I notice that the lines of her eyebrows, nose and mouth all
end with a slight upward curve like a yacht's sails, which gives a kind
of hopefulness and self-confidence to her expression. Mind and face have
the same curves."
"Is that your idea of our national type?" asked Strong. "Why don't you
put it into one of your saints in the church, and show what you mean by
American art?"
"I wish I could," said the artist. "I have passed weeks trying to catch
it. The thing is too subtle, and it is not a grand type, like what we
are used to in the academies. But besides the riddle, I like Miss Dudley
for herself. The way she takes my brutal criticisms of her painting
makes my heart bleed. I mean to go down on my knees one of these days,
and confess to her that I know nothing about it; only if her style is
right, my art is wrong."
"What sort of a world does this new deity of yours belong to?" asked the
clergyman.
"Not to yours," replied Wharton quickly. "There is nothing medieval
about her. If she belongs to any besides the present, it is to the next
world which artists want to see, when paganism will come again and we
can give a divinity to every waterfall. I tell you, Hazard, I am sick at
heart about our church work; it is a failure. Never till this morning
did I feel the whole truth, but the instant I got inside the doors it
flashed upon me like St. Paul's great light. The thing does not belong
to our time or feelings."
The conversation having thus come round to the subject which Mr. Hazard
wanted to discuss, the three men plunged deep into serious talk which
lasted till after midnight had struck from the neighboring church.
_Chapter II_
Punctually the next day at three o'clock, Esther Dudley appeared in her
aunt's drawing-room where she found half a dozen ladies chatting, or
looking at Mr. Murray's pictures in the front parlor. The lady of the
house sat in an arm-chair before the fire in an inner room, talking with
two other ladies of the board, one of whom, with an aggressive and
superior manner, seemed finding fault with every thing except the Middle
Ages and Pericles.
"A tailor who builds a palace to live in," said she, "is a vulgar
tailor, and an artist who paints the tailor and his palace as though he
were painting a doge of Venice, is a vulgar artist."
"But, Mrs. Dyer," replied her hostess coldly, "I don't believe there was
any real difference between a doge of Venice and a doge of New York.
They all made fortunes more or less by cheating their neighbors, and
when they were rich they wanted portraits. Some one told them to send
for Mr. Tizian or Mr. Wharton, and he made of them all the gentlemen
there ever were."
Mrs. Dyer frowned a protest against this heresy. "Tizian would have
respected his art," said she; "these New York men are making money."
"For my part," said Mrs. Murray as gently as she could, "I am grateful
to any one who likes beautiful things and is willing to pay for them,
and I hope the artists will make them as beautiful as they can for the
money. The number is small."
With this she rose, and moving to the table, called her meeting to
order. The ladies seated themselves in a business-like way round about,
and listened with masculine gravity to a long written report on the work
done or needing to be done at the Children's Hospital. Debate rose on
the question of putting in a new kitchen range and renewing the
plumbing. Mrs. Dyer took the floor, or the table, very much to herself,
dealing severely with the treatment of the late kitchen range, and
bringing numerous complaints against the matron, the management and the
hospital in general. There was an evident look of weariness on the part
of the board when she began, but not until after a two hours' session
did she show signs of exhaustion and allow a vote to be taken. The
necessary work was then rapidly done, and at last Mrs. Murray, referring
in a business-like way to her notes, remarked that she had nothing more
to suggest except that Mr. Hazard, the new clergyman at St. John's,
should be elected as a member of their visiting committee.
"Do we want more figure-heads there?" asked Mrs. Dyer. "Every day and
every hour of Mr. Hazard's time ought to be devoted to his church. What
we want is workers. We have no one to look after the children's clothes
and go down into the kitchen. All our visitors are good for is to amuse
the children for half an hour now and then by telling them stories."
Mrs. Murray explained that the election was rather a matter of custom;
that the rector of St. John's always had been a member of their
committee, and it would look like a personal slight if they left him
off; so the vote was passed and the meeting broke up. When the last echo
of rapid talk and leave-taking had ceased, Mrs. Murray sat down again
before the fire with the air of one who has tried to keep her temper and
has not thoroughly satisfied her ambition.
"Mrs. Dyer is very trying," she said to Esther who stayed after the
others went; "but there is always one such woman on every board. I
should not care except that she gives me a dreadful feeling that I am
like her. I hope I'm not, but I know I am."
"You're not, Aunt Sarah!" replied Esther. "She can stick pins faster and
deeper than a dozen such as you. What makes me unhappy is that her
spitefulness goes so deep. Her dig at me about telling stories to the
children seemed to cut me up by the roots. All I do is to tell them
stories."
"I hope she will never make herself useful in that way," rejoined Mrs.
Murray grimly. "She would frighten the poor little things into
convulsions. Don't let her worry you about usefulness. One of these days
you will have to be useful whether you like it or not, and now you are
doing enough if you are only ornamental. I know you will hold your
tongue at the board meetings, and that is real usefulness."
"Very well, aunt! I can do that. And I can go on cutting out dolls'
clothes for the children, though Mrs. Dyer will complain that my dolls
are not sufficiently dressed. I wish I did not respect people for
despising me."
"If we did not, there would be no Mrs. Dyers," answered her aunt. "She
is a terrible woman. I feel always like a sort of dry lamp-wick when she
has left me. Never mind! I have something else now to talk about. I want
you to make yourself useful in a harder path."
"Not another Charity Board, aunt," said Esther rather piteously.
"Worse!" said Mrs. Murray. "A charity girl! Thirty years ago I had a
dear friend who was also a friend of your poor mother's. Her name was
Catherine Cortright. She married a man named Brooke, and they went west,
and they kept going further and further west until at length they
reached Colorado, where she died, leaving one daughter, a child of ten
years old. The father married again and had a new family. Very lately he
has died, leaving the girl with her step-mother and half-sisters. She is
unhappy there; they seem to have brought her up in a strict Presbyterian
kind of way, and she does not like it. Mr. Murray is an executor under
her father's will, and when she comes of age in a few months, she will
have a little independent property. She has asked me to look after her
till then, and is coming on at once to make me a visit."
"You are always doing something for somebody," said Esther. "What do you
expect her to be, and how long will she stay?"
"I don't expect any thing, my dear, and my heart sinks whenever I think
of her. My letters say she is amiable and pretty; but if she is a
rattlesnake, I must take her in, and you must help to amuse her."
"I will do all I can," replied Esther. "Don't be low about it. She can't
be as bad as Mrs. Dyer even if she is a rattlesnake. If she is pretty,
and turns out well, we will make George marry her."
"I wish we might," said her aunt.
Esther went her way and thought no more of the orphan, but Mrs. Murray
carried the weight of all New York on her mind. Not the least of her
anxieties was the condition of her brother-in-law, Esther's father. He
was now a confirmed invalid, grateful for society and amusement, and
almost every day he expected his sister-in-law to take him to drive, if
the weather was tolerable. The tax was severe, but she bore it with
heroism, and his gratitude sustained her. When she came for him the next
morning, she found him reading as usual, and waiting for her. "I was
just wondering," said he, "whether I could read five minutes longer
without a stimulant. Do you know that indiscriminate reading is a
fiendish torture. No convict could stand it. I seldom take up a book in
these days without thinking how much more amusing it would be to jolt
off on a bright day at the head of a funeral procession. Between the two
ways of amusing one's-self, I am principled against books."
"You have a very rough way of expressing your tastes," said Mrs. Murray
with a shiver, as they got into her carriage. "Do you know, I never
could understand the humor of joking about funerals."
"That surprises me," said Mr. Dudley. "A good funeral needs a joke. If
mine is not more amusing than my friends', I would rather not go to it.
The kind of funeral I am invited to has no sort of charm. Indeed, I
don't know that I was ever asked to one that seemed to me to show an
elegant hospitality in the host."
"If you can't amuse me better, William, I will drive you home again,"
said his sister-in-law.
"Not quite yet. I have something more to say on this business of
funerals which is just now not a little on my mind."
"Are you joking now, or serious?" asked Mrs. Murray.
"I cannot myself see any humor in what I have to say," replied Mr.
Dudley; "but I am told that even professional humorists seldom enjoy
jokes at their own expense. The case is this. My doctors, who give me
their word of honor that they are not more ignorant than the average of
their profession, told me long ago that I might die at any moment. I
knew then that I must be quite safe, and thought no more about it. Their
first guess was wrong. Instead of going off suddenly and without notice,
as a colonel of New York volunteers should, I began last summer to go
off by bits, as though I were ashamed to be seen running away. This time
the doctors won't say any thing, which alarms me. I have watched myself
and them for some weeks until I feel pretty confident that I had better
get ready to start. All through life I have been thinking how I could
best get out of it, and on the whole I am well enough satisfied with
this way, except on Esther's account, and it is about her that I want to
consult you."
Mrs. Murray knew her brother-in-law too well to irritate him by
condolence or sympathy. She said only: "Why be anxious? Esther can take
care of herself. Perhaps she will marry, but if not, she has nothing to
fear. The unmarried women nowadays are better off than the married
ones."
"Oh!" said Mr. Dudley with his usual air of deep gravity; "it is not
she, but her husband who is on my mind. I have hated the fellow all his
life. About twice a year I have treacherously stabbed him in the back as
he was going out of my own front door. I knew that he would interfere
with my comfort if I let him get a footing. After all he was always a
poor creature, and did not deserve to live. My conscience does not
reproach me. But now, when I am weak, and his ghost rises in an
irrepressible manner, and grins at me on my own threshold, I begin to
feel a sort of pity, mingled with contempt. I want to show charity to
him before I die."
"What on earth do you mean?" asked his sister-in-law with an impatient
groan. "For thirty years I have been trying to understand you, and you
grow worse every year."
"Now, I am not surprised to hear you say so. Any sympathy for the
husband is unusual, no doubt, yet I am not prepared to admit that it is
unintelligible. You go too far."
"Take your own way, William. When you are tired, let me know what it is
that you think I can do."
"I want you to find the poor fellow, and tell him that I bear him no
real ill-will."
"You want me to find a husband for Esther?"
"If you have nothing better to do. I have looked rather carefully
through her list of friends, and, taking out the dancing men who don't
count, I see nobody who would answer, except perhaps her Cousin George,
and to marry him would be cold-blooded. She might as well marry you."
"I have thought a great deal about that match, as you know," replied
Mrs. Murray. "It would not answer. I could get over the cousinship, if
I must, but Esther will want a husband to herself and George is a
vagabond. He could never make her happy."
"George had the ill-luck," said Mr. Dudley, "to inherit a small spark of
something almost like genius; and a little weak genius mixed in with a
little fortune, goes a long way towards making a jack-o-lantern. Still
we won't exaggerate George's genius. After all there is not enough of it
to prevent his being the best of the lot."
"He could not hold her a week," said Mrs. Murray; "nor she him."
"I own that on his wedding day he would probably be in Dakota flirting
with the bones of a fossil monkey," said Mr. Dudley thoughtfully; "but
what better can you suggest?"
"I suggest that you should leave it alone, and let Esther take care of
her own husband," replied Mrs. Murray. "Women must take their chance. It
is what they are for. Marriage makes no real difference in their lot.
All the contented women are fools, and all the discontented ones want to
be men. Women are a blunder in the creation, and must take the
consequences. If Esther is sensible she will never marry; but no woman
is sensible, so she will marry without consulting us."
"You are always eloquent on this subject," said Mr. Dudley. "Why have
you never applied for a divorce from poor Murray?"
"Because Mr. Murray happens to be one man in a million," answered she.
"Nothing on earth would induce me to begin over again and take such a
risk a second time, with life before me. As for bringing about a
marriage, I would almost rather bring about a murder."
"Poor Esther!" said he gloomily. "She has been brought up among men, and
is not used to harness. If things go wrong she will rebel, and a woman
who rebels is lost."
"Esther has known too many good men ever to marry a bad one," she
replied.
"I am not sure of that," he answered. "When I am out of the way she will
feel lonely, and any man who wants her very much can probably get her.
Joking apart, it is there I want your help. Keep an eye on her. Your
principles will let you prevent a marriage, even though you are not
allowed to make one."
"I hope she will not want my help in either way," said Mrs. Murray; "but
if she does, I will remember what you say--though I would rather go out
to service at five dollars a week than do this kind of work. Do you know
that I have already a girl on my hands? Poor Catherine Brooke's daughter
is coming to-morrow from Colorado to be under my care for the next few
months till she is of age. She never has been to the East, and I expect
to have my hands full."
"If I had known it," said he, "I think I would have selected some wiser
woman to look after Esther."
"You are too encouraging," replied Mrs. Murray. "If I talk longer with
you I shall have a crying fit. Suppose we change the subject and amuse
ourselves in a cheerfuller way."
They finished their drive talking of less personal matters, but Mrs.
Murray, after leaving her brother-in-law at his house, went back to her
own with spirits depressed to a point as low as any woman past fifty
cares to enjoy. She had reason to know that Mr. Dudley was not mistaken
about his symptoms, and that not many months could pass before that must
happen which he foresaw. He could find some relief in talking and even
in jesting about it, but she could only with difficulty keep herself
from an outburst of grief. She had every reason to feel keenly. To lose
one's oldest friends is a trial that human nature never accustoms itself
to bear with satisfaction, even when the loss does not double one's
responsibilities; but in this case Mrs. Murray, as she grew old, saw her
niece Esther about to come on her hands at the same time when a wild
girl from the prairie was on the road to her very door, and she had no
sufficient authority to control either of them. For a woman without
children of her own, to act this part of matron to an extemporized
girls' college might be praise-worthy, but could not bring repose of
mind or body.
Mrs. Murray was still wider awake to this truth when she went the next
day to the Grand Central Station to wait for the arrival of her Colorado
orphan. The Chicago express glided in as gracefully and silently as
though it were in quite the best society, and had run a thousand miles
or so only for gentle exercise before dining at Delmonico's and passing
an evening at the opera. Among the crowd of passengers who passed out
were several women whose appearance gave Mrs. Murray a pang of fear, but
at length she caught sight of one who pleased her fastidious eye. "I
hope it is she," broke from her lips as the girl came towards her, and a
moment later her hope was gratified. She drew a breath of relief that
made her light-hearted. Whatever faults the girl might have, want of
charm was not among them. As she raised her veil, the engine-stoker,
leaning from his engine above them, nodded approval. In spite of dust
and cinders, the fatigue and exposure of two thousand miles or so of
travel, the girl was fresh as a summer morning, and her complexion was
like the petals of a sweetbrier rose. Her dark blue woollen dress,
evidently made by herself, soothed Mrs. Murray's anxieties more
completely than though it had come by the last steamer from the best
modiste in Paris.
"Is it possible you have come all the way alone?" she asked, looking
about with lurking suspicion of possible lovers still to be revealed.
"Only from Chicago," answered Catherine; "I stopped awhile there to
rest, but I had friends to take care of me."
"And you were not homesick or lonely?"
"No! I made friends on the cars. I have been taking care of a sick lady
and her three children, who are all on their way to Europe, and wanted
to pay my expenses if I would go with them."
"I don't wonder!" said Mrs. Murray with an unusual burst of sympathy.
No sooner had they fairly reached the house than Esther came to see the
stranger and found her aunt in high spirits. "She is as natural and
sweet as a flower," said Mrs. Murray. "To be sure she has a few Western
tricks; she says she stopped awhile at Chicago, and that she has a raft
of things in her trunks, and she asks häow, and says äout; but so do
half the girls in New York, and I will break her of it in a week so that
you will never know she was not educated in Boston and finished in
Europe. I was terribly afraid she would wear a linen duster and
water-waves."
Catherine became a favorite on the spot. No one could resist her hazel
eyes and the curve of her neck, or her pure complexion which had the
transparency of a Colorado sunrise. Her good nature was inexhaustible,
and she occasionally developed a touch of sentiment which made Mr.
Murray assert that she was the most dangerous coquette within his
experience. Mr. Murray, who had a sound though uncultivated taste for
pretty girls, succumbed to her charms, while George Strong, whose good
nature was very like her own, never tired of drawing her out and
enjoying her comments on the new life about her.
"What kind of a revolver do you carry?" asked George, gravely, at his
first interview with her; "do you like yours heavy, or say a 32 ball?"
"Don't mind him, Catherine," said Mrs. Murray; "he is always making poor
jokes."
"Oh, but I'm not strong enough to use heavy shooting-irons," replied
Catherine quite seriously. "I had a couple of light ones in my room at
home, but father told me I could never hurt any thing with them, and I
never did."
"Always missed your man?" asked George.
"I never fired at a man but once. One night I took one of our herders
for a thief and shot at him, but I missed, and just got laughed at for a
week. That was before we moved down to Denver, where we don't use
pistols much."
Strong felt a little doubt whether she was making fun of him or he of
her, and she never left him in perfect security on this point.
"What is your name in Sioux, Catherine," he would ask; "Laughing
Strawberry, I suppose, or Jumping Turtle?"
"No!" she answered. "I have a very pretty name in Sioux. They call me
the Sage Hen, because I am so quiet. I like it much better than my own
name."