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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - "The Common Law"

Benedict de Spinoza - "The Ethics [Part 5]"

Mark E. Laxer - "TAKE ME FOR A RIDE"

Thomas Paine - "Common Sense, by Thomas Paine"

The House Behind The Cedars

C >> Charles W. Chesnutt >> The House Behind The Cedars




"He says that he loves me. He DOES love me.
Would he love me, if he knew?" She stood
before an oval mirror brought from France by one
of Warwick's wife's ancestors, and regarded her
image with a coldly critical eye. She was as little
vain as any of her sex who are endowed with
beauty. She tried to place herself, in thus passing
upon her own claims to consideration, in the
hostile attitude of society toward her hidden
disability. There was no mark upon her brow to
brand her as less pure, less innocent, less desirable,
less worthy to be loved, than these proud women
of the past who had admired themselves in this
old mirror.

"I think a man might love me for myself," she
murmured pathetically, "and if he loved me truly,
that he would marry me. If he would not marry
me, then it would be because he didn't love me.
I'll tell George my secret. If he leaves me, then
he does not love me."

But this resolution vanished into thin air before
it was fully formulated. The secret was not hers
alone; it involved her brother's position, to whom
she owed everything, and in less degree the future
of her little nephew, whom she had learned to love
so well. She had the choice of but two courses of
action, to marry Tryon or to dismiss him. The
thought that she might lose him made him seem
only more dear; to think that he might leave her
made her sick at heart. In one week she was
bound to give him an answer; he was more likely
to ask for it at their next meeting.


IX

DOUBTS AND FEARS


Rena's heart was too heavy with these misgivings
for her to keep them to herself. On the
morning after the conversation with Tryon in
which she had promised him an answer within a
week, she went into her brother's study, where he
usually spent an hour after breakfast before going
to his office. He looked up amiably from the
book before him and read trouble in her face.

"Well, Rena, dear," he asked with a smile,
"what's the matter? Is there anything you
want--money, or what? I should like to have
Aladdin's lamp--though I'd hardly need it--
that you might have no wish unsatisfied."

He had found her very backward in asking for
things that she needed. Generous with his means,
he thought nothing too good for her. Her success
had gratified his pride, and justified his course in
taking her under his protection.

"Thank you, John. You give me already more
than I need. It is something else, John. George
wants me to say when I will marry him. I am
afraid to marry him, without telling him. If he
should find out afterwards, he might cast me off,
or cease to love me. If he did not know it, I
should be forever thinking of what he would do if
he SHOULD find it out; or, if I should die without
his having learned it, I should not rest easy in
my grave for thinking of what he would have
done if he HAD found it out."

Warwick's smile gave place to a grave expression
at this somewhat comprehensive statement. He
rose and closed the door carefully, lest some one
of the servants might overhear the conversation.
More liberally endowed than Rena with imagination,
and not without a vein of sentiment, he had
nevertheless a practical side that outweighed them
both. With him, the problem that oppressed his
sister had been in the main a matter of argument,
of self-conviction. Once persuaded that he had
certain rights, or ought to have them, by virtue of
the laws of nature, in defiance of the customs of
mankind, he had promptly sought to enjoy them.
This he had been able to do by simply concealing
his antecedents and making the most of his
opportunities, with no troublesome qualms of conscience
whatever. But he had already perceived, in their
brief intercourse, that Rena's emotions, while less
easily stirred, touched a deeper note than his, and
dwelt upon it with greater intensity than if they
had been spread over the larger field to which a
more ready sympathy would have supplied so many
points of access;--hers was a deep and silent current
flowing between the narrow walls of a self-
contained life, his the spreading river that ran
through a pleasant landscape. Warwick's
imagination, however, enabled him to put himself in touch
with her mood and recognize its bearings upon her
conduct. He would have preferred her taking the
practical point of view, to bring her round to which
he perceived would be a matter of diplomacy.

"How long have these weighty thoughts been
troubling your small head?" he asked with assumed
lightness.

"Since he asked me last night to name our
wedding day."

"My dear child," continued Warwick, "you take
too tragic a view of life. Marriage is a reciprocal
arrangement, by which the contracting parties give
love for love, care for keeping, faith for faith. It
is a matter of the future, not of the past. What
a poor soul it is that has not some secret chamber,
sacred to itself; where one can file away the things
others have no right to know, as well as things that
one himself would fain forget! We are under no
moral obligation to inflict upon others the history
of our past mistakes, our wayward thoughts, our
secret sins, our desperate hopes, or our heartbreaking
disappointments. Still less are we bound
to bring out from this secret chamber the dusty
record of our ancestry.

`Let the dead past bury its dead.'

George Tryon loves you for yourself alone; it is
not your ancestors that he seeks to marry."

"But would he marry me if he knew?" she
persisted.

Warwick paused for reflection. He would have
preferred to argue the question in a general way,
but felt the necessity of satisfying her scruples, as
far as might be. He had liked Tryon from the
very beginning of their acquaintance. In all their
intercourse, which had been very close for several
months, he had been impressed by the young man's
sunny temper, his straightforwardness, his intellectual
honesty. Tryon's deference to Warwick as
the elder man had very naturally proved an
attraction. Whether this friendship would have stood
the test of utter frankness about his own past was
a merely academic speculation with which Warwick
did not trouble himself. With his sister the
question had evidently become a matter of conscience,
--a difficult subject with which to deal in a person
of Rena's temperament.

"My dear sister," he replied, "why should he
know? We haven't asked him for his pedigree;
we don't care to know it. If he cares for ours, he
should ask for it, and it would then be time enough
to raise the question. You love him, I imagine,
and wish to make him happy?"

It is the highest wish of the woman who loves.
The enamored man seeks his own happiness; the
loving woman finds no sacrifice too great for the
loved one. The fiction of chivalry made man serve
woman; the fact of human nature makes woman
happiest when serving where she loves.

"Yes, oh, yes," Rena exclaimed with fervor,
clasping her hands unconsciously. "I'm afraid
he'd be unhappy if he knew, and it would make me
miserable to think him unhappy."

"Well, then," said Warwick, "suppose we
should tell him our secret and put ourselves in his
power, and that he should then conclude that he
couldn't marry you? Do you imagine he would be
any happier than he is now, or than if he should
never know?"

Ah, no! she could not think so. One could
not tear love out of one's heart without pain and
suffering.

There was a knock at the door. Warwick
opened it to the nurse, who stood with little Albert
in her arms.

"Please, suh," said the girl, with a curtsy, "de
baby 's be'n oryin' an' frettin' fer Miss Rena, an'
I 'lowed she mought want me ter fetch 'im, ef it
wouldn't'sturb her."

"Give me the darling," exclaimed Rena, coming
forward and taking the child from the nurse. "It
wants its auntie. Come to its auntie, bless its
little heart!"

Little Albert crowed with pleasure and put up
his pretty mouth for a kiss. Warwick found the
sight a pleasant one. If he could but quiet his
sister's troublesome scruples, he might erelong see
her fondling beautiful children of her own. Even
if Rena were willing to risk her happiness, and he
to endanger his position, by a quixotic frankness,
the future of his child must not be compromised.

"You wouldn't want to make George unhappy,"
Warwick resumed when the nurse retired. "Very
well; would you not be willing, for his sake, to keep
a secret--your secret and mine, and that of the
innocent child in your arms? Would you involve
all of us in difficulties merely to secure your own
peace of mind? Doesn't such a course seem just
the least bit selfish? Think the matter over from
that point of view, and we'll speak of it later in the
day. I shall be with George all the morning, and
I may be able, by a little management, to find out
his views on the subject of birth and family, and
all that. Some men are very liberal, and love is a
great leveler. I'll sound him, at any rate."

He kissed the baby and left Rena to her own
reflections, to which his presentation of the case had
given a new turn. It had never before occurred to
her to regard silence in the light of self-sacrifice.
It had seemed a sort of sin; her brother's argument
made of it a virtue. It was not the first
time, nor the last, that right and wrong had been
a matter of view-point.

Tryon himself furnished the opening for
Warwick's proposed examination. The younger man
could not long remain silent upon the subject
uppermost in his mind. "I am anxious, John," he said,
"to have Rowena name the happiest day of my
life--our wedding day. When the trial in Edgecombe
County is finished, I shall have no further
business here, and shall be ready to leave for home.
I should like to take my bride with me, and surprise
my mother."

Mothers, thought Warwick, are likely to prove
inquisitive about their sons' wives, especially when
taken unawares in matters of such importance.
This seemed a good time to test the liberality of
Tryon's views, and to put forward a shield for his
sister's protection.

"Are you sure, George, that your mother will
find the surprise agreeable when you bring home a
bride of whom you know so little and your mother
nothing at all?"

Tryon had felt that it would be best to surprise
his mother. She would need only to see Rena to
approve of her, but she was so far prejudiced in
favor of Blanche Leary that it would be wisest to
present the argument after having announced the
irrevocable conclusion. Rena herself would be a
complete justification for the accomplished deed.

"I think you ought to know, George," continued
Warwick, without waiting for a reply to his question,
"that my sister and I are not of an old family,
or a rich family, or a distinguished family; that
she can bring you nothing but herself; that we
have no connections of which you could boast, and
no relatives to whom we should be glad to introduce
you. You must take us for ourselves alone--we
are new people."

"My dear John," replied the young man
warmly, "there is a great deal of nonsense about
families. If a man is noble and brave and
strong, if a woman is beautiful and good and true,
what matters it about his or her ancestry? If an
old family can give them these things, then it is
valuable; if they possess them without it, then of
what use is it, except as a source of empty pride,
which they would be better without? If all new
families were like yours, there would be no advantage
in belonging to an old one. All I care to
know of Rowena's family is that she is your sister;
and you'll pardon me, old fellow, if I add that she
hardly needs even you,--she carries the stamp of
her descent upon her face and in her heart."

"It makes me glad to hear you speak in that
way," returned Warwick, delighted by the young
man's breadth and earnestness.

"Oh, I mean every word of it," replied Tryon.
"Ancestors, indeed, for Rowena! I will tell you
a family secret, John, to prove how little I care for
ancestors. My maternal great-great-grandfather, a
hundred and fifty years ago, was hanged, drawn,
and quartered for stealing cattle across the Scottish
border. How is that for a pedigree? Behold
in me the lineal descendant of a felon!"

Warwick felt much relieved at this avowal.
His own statement had not touched the vital point
involved; it had been at the best but a half-truth;
but Tryon's magnanimity would doubtless protect
Rena from any close inquiry concerning her past.
It even occurred to Warwick for a moment that
he might safely disclose the secret to Tryon; but
an appreciation of certain facts of history and
certain traits of human nature constrained him
to put the momentary thought aside. It was a
great relief, however, to imagine that Tryon might
think lightly of this thing that he need never
know.

"Well, Rena," he said to his sister when he
went home at noon: "I've sounded George."

"What did he say?" she asked eagerly.

"I told him we were people of no family, and
that we had no relatives that we were proud of.
He said he loved you for yourself, and would
never ask you about your ancestry."

"Oh, I am so glad!" exclaimed Rena joyfully.
This report left her very happy for about three
hours, or until she began to analyze carefully her
brother's account of what had been said. Warwick's
statement had not been specific,--he had
not told Tryon THE thing. George's reply, in turn,
had been a mere generality. The concrete fact
that oppressed her remained unrevealed, and her
doubt was still unsatisfied.

Rena was occupied with this thought when her
lover next came to see her. Tryon came up the
sanded walk from the gate and spoke pleasantly
to the nurse, a good-looking yellow girl who was
seated on the front steps, playing with little
Albert. He took the boy from her arms, and
she went to call Miss Warwick.

Rena came out, followed by the nurse, who
offered to take the child.

"Never mind, Mimy, leave him with me," said
Tryon.

The nurse walked discreetly over into the garden,
remaining within call, but beyond the hearing
of conversation in an ordinary tone.

"Rena, darling," said her lover, "when shall
it be? Surely you won't ask me to wait a week.
Why, that's a lifetime!"

Rena was struck by a brilliant idea. She
would test her lover. Love was a very powerful
force; she had found it the greatest, grandest,
sweetest thing in the world. Tryon had said that
he loved her; he had said scarcely anything else
for several weeks, surely nothing else worth remembering.
She would test his love by a hypothetical question.

"You say you love me," she said, glancing at
him with a sad thoughtfulness in her large dark
eyes. "How much do you love me?"

"I love you all one can love. True love has no
degrees; it is all or nothing!"

"Would you love me," she asked, with an air
of coquetry that masked her concern, pointing
toward the girl in the shrubbery, "if I were
Albert's nurse yonder?"

"If you were Albert's nurse," he replied, with
a joyous laugh, "he would have to find another
within a week, for within a week we should be
married."

The answer seemed to fit the question, but in
fact, Tryon's mind and Rena's did not meet. That
two intelligent persons should each attach a different
meaning to so simple a form of words as
Rena's question was the best ground for her
misgiving with regard to the marriage. But love
blinded her. She was anxious to be convinced.
She interpreted the meaning of his speech by her
own thought and by the ardor of his glance, and
was satisfied with the answer.

"And now, darling," pleaded Tryon, "will you
not fix the day that shall make me happy? I
shall be ready to go away in three weeks. Will
you go with me?"

"Yes," she answered, in a tumult of joy. She
would never need to tell him her secret now. It
would make no difference with him, so far as she
was concerned; and she had no right to reveal her
brother's secret. She was willing to bury the past
in forgetfulness, now that she knew it would have
no interest for her lover.



X

THE DREAM


The marriage was fixed for the thirtieth of the
month, immediately after which Tryon and his
bride were to set out for North Carolina. Warwick
would have liked it much if Tryon had
lived in South Carolina; but the location of his
North Carolina home was at some distance from
Patesville, with which it had no connection by
steam or rail, and indeed lay altogether out of the
line of travel to Patesville. Rena had no
acquaintance with people of social standing in North
Carolina; and with the added maturity and charm
due to her improved opportunities, it was unlikely
that any former resident of Patesville who might
casually meet her would see in the elegant young
matron from South Carolina more than a passing
resemblance to a poor girl who had once lived in an
obscure part of the old town. It would of course
be necessary for Rena to keep away from Patesville;
save for her mother's sake, she would hardly
be tempted to go back.

On the twentieth of the month, Warwick set
out with Tryon for the county seat of the adjoining
county, to try one of the lawsuits which had
required Tryon's presence in South Carolina for
so long a time. Their destination was a day's
drive from Clarence, behind a good horse, and the
trial was expected to last a week.

"This week will seem like a year," said Tryon
ruefully, the evening before their departure, "but
I'll write every day, and shall expect a letter as
often."

"The mail goes only twice a week, George,"
replied Rena.

"Then I shall have three letters in each mail."

Warwick and Tryon were to set out in the cool
of the morning, after an early breakfast. Rena
was up at daybreak that she might preside at the
breakfast-table and bid the travelers good-by.

"John," said Rena to her brother in the
morning, "I dreamed last night that mother was ill."

"Dreams, you know, Rena," answered Warwick
lightly, "go by contraries. Yours undoubtedly
signifies that our mother, God bless her
simple soul! is at the present moment enjoying
her usual perfect health. She was never sick in
her life."

For a few months after leaving Patesville with
her brother, Rena had suffered tortures of
homesickness; those who have felt it know the pang.
The severance of old ties had been abrupt and
complete. At the school where her brother had
taken her, there had been nothing to relieve the
strangeness of her surroundings--no schoolmate
from her own town, no relative or friend of the
family near by. Even the compensation of human
sympathy was in a measure denied her, for Rena
was too fresh from her prison-house to doubt that
sympathy would fail before the revelation of
the secret the consciousness of which oppressed
her at that time like a nightmare. It was not
strange that Rena, thus isolated, should have been
prostrated by homesickness for several weeks
after leaving Patesville. When the paroxysm
had passed, there followed a dull pain, which
gradually subsided into a resignation as profound, in
its way, as had been her longing for home. She
loved, she suffered, with a quiet intensity of which
her outward demeanor gave no adequate expression.
From some ancestral source she had derived
a strain of the passive fatalism by which alone
one can submit uncomplainingly to the inevitable.
By the same token, when once a thing had been
decided, it became with her a finality, which only
some extraordinary stress of emotion could disturb.
She had acquiesced in her brother's plan;
for her there was no withdrawing; her homesickness
was an incidental thing which must be endured,
as patiently as might be, until time should
have brought a measure of relief.

Warwick had made provision for an occasional
letter from Patesville, by leaving with his mother a
number of envelopes directed to his address. She
could have her letters written, inclose them in
these envelopes, and deposit them in the post-
office with her own hand. Thus the place of
Warwick's residence would remain within her own
knowledge, and his secret would not be placed at
the mercy of any wandering Patesvillian who
might perchance go to that part of South Carolina.
By this simple means Rena had kept as closely in
touch with her mother as Warwick had considered
prudent; any closer intercourse was not consistent
with their present station in life.

The night after Warwick and Tryon had ridden
away, Rena dreamed again that her mother
was ill. Better taught people than she, in regions
more enlightened than the South Carolina of that
epoch, are disturbed at times by dreams. Mis'
Molly had a profound faith in them. If God, in
ancient times, had spoken to men in visions of the
night, what easier way could there be for Him to
convey his meaning to people of all ages? Science,
which has shattered many an idol and destroyed
many a delusion, has made but slight inroads
upon the shadowy realm of dreams. For Mis'
Molly, to whom science would have meant nothing
and psychology would have been a meaningless
term, the land of dreams was carefully mapped
and bounded. Each dream had some special significance,
or was at least susceptible of classification
under some significant head. Dreams, as a general
rule, went by contraries; but a dream three times
repeated was a certain portent of the thing defined.
Rena's few years of schooling at Patesville
and her months at Charleston had scarcely disturbed
these hoary superstitions which lurk in the
dim corners of the brain. No lady in Clarence,
perhaps, would have remained undisturbed by a vivid
dream, three times repeated, of some event bearing
materially upon her own life.

The first repetition of a dream was decisive of
nothing, for two dreams meant no more than one.
The power of the second lay in the suspense, the
uncertainty, to which it gave rise. Two doubled
the chance of a third. The day following this
second dream was an anxious one for Rena. She
could not for an instant dismiss her mother from
her thoughts, which were filled too with a certain
self-reproach. She had left her mother alone; if
her mother were really ill, there was no one at home
to tend her with loving care. This feeling grew
in force, until by nightfall Rena had become very
unhappy, and went to bed with the most dismal
forebodings. In this state of mind, it is not
surprising that she now dreamed that her mother was
lying at the point of death, and that she cried out
with heart-rending pathos:--

"Rena, my darlin', why did you forsake yo'r
pore old mother? Come back to me, honey; I'll
die ef I don't see you soon."

The stress of subconscious emotion engendered
by the dream was powerful enough to wake Rena,
and her mother's utterance seemed to come to her
with the force of a fateful warning and a great
reproach. Her mother was sick and needed her,
and would die if she did not come. She felt that
she must see her mother,--it would be almost
like murder to remain away from her under such
circumstances.

After breakfast she went into the business part
of the town and inquired at what time a train
would leave that would take her toward Patesville.
Since she had come away from the town, a railroad
had been opened by which the long river
voyage might be avoided, and, making allowance
for slow trains and irregular connections, the town
of Patesville could be reached by an all-rail route
in about twelve hours. Calling at the post-office
for the family mail, she found there a letter from
her mother, which she tore open in great excitement.
It was written in an unpracticed hand and
badly spelled, and was in effect as follows:--


MY DEAR DAUGHTER,--I take my pen in hand
to let you know that I am not very well. I have
had a kind of misery in my side for two weeks,
with palpitations of the heart, and I have been in
bed for three days. I'm feeling mighty poorly, but
Dr. Green says that I'll get over it in a few days.
Old Aunt Zilphy is staying with me, and looking
after things tolerably well. I hope this will find
you and John enjoying good health. Give my
love to John, and I hope the Lord will bless him
and you too. Cousin Billy Oxendine has had a
rising on his neck, and has had to have it lanced.
Mary B. has another young one, a boy this time.
Old man Tom Johnson was killed last week while
trying to whip black Jim Brown, who lived down
on the Wilmington Road. Jim has run away.
There has been a big freshet in the river, and it
looked at one time as if the new bridge would be
washed away.

Frank comes over every day or two and asks
about you. He says to tell you that he don't
believe you are coming back any more, but you are
to remember him, and that foolishness he said
about bringing you back from the end of the
world with his mule and cart. He's very good to
me, and brings over shavings and kindling-wood,
and made me a new well-bucket for nothing. It's
a comfort to talk to him about you, though I
haven't told him where you are living.

I hope this will find you and John both well,
and doing well. I should like to see you, but if
it's the Lord's will that I shouldn't, I shall be
thankful anyway that you have done what was
the best for yourselves and your children, and that
I have given you up for your own good.
Your affectionate mother,
MARY WALDEN.

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