An Oldport Romance
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> An Oldport Romance
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Kate's anxieties, when she at last hinted them to Malbone, only
sent him further into revery. "How is it," he asked himself,
"that when I only sought to love and be loved, I have thus
entangled myself in the fate of others? How is one's heart to
be governed? Is there any such governing? Mlle. Clairon
complained that, so soon as she became seriously attached to
any one, she was sure to meet somebody else whom she liked
better. Have human hearts," he said, "or at least, has my
heart, no more stability than this?"
It did not help the matter when Emilia went to stay awhile with
Mrs. Meredith. The event came about in this way. Hope and Kate
had been to a dinner-party, and were as usual reciting their
experiences to Aunt Jane.
"Was it pleasant?" said that sympathetic lady.
"It was one of those dreadfully dark dining-rooms," said Hope,
seating herself at the open window.
"Why do they make them look so like tombs?" said Kate.
"Because," said her aunt, "most Americans pass from them to the
tomb, after eating such indigestible things. There is a wish
for a gentle transition."
"Aunt Jane," said Hope, "Mrs. Meredith asks to have a little
visit from Emilia. Do you think she had better go?"
"Mrs. Meredith?" asked Aunt Jane. "Is that woman alive yet?"
"Why, auntie!" said Kate. "We were talking about her only a
week ago."
"Perhaps so," conceded Aunt Jane, reluctantly. "But it seems
to me she has great length of days!"
"How very improperly you are talking, dear!" said Kate. "She
is not more than forty, and you are--"
"Fifty-four," interrupted the other.
"Then she has not seen nearly so many days as you."
"But they are such long days! That is what I must have meant.
One of her days is as long as three of mine. She is so
tiresome!"
"She does not tire you very often," said Kate.
"She comes once a year," said Aunt Jane. "And then it is not
to see me. She comes out of respect to the memory of my
great-aunt, with whom Talleyrand fell in love, when he was in
America, before Mrs. Meredith was born. Yes, Emilia may as well
go."
So Emilia went. To provide her with companionship, Mrs.
Meredith kindly had Blanche Ingleside to stay there also.
Blanche stayed at different houses a good deal. To do her
justice, she was very good company, when put upon her best
behavior, and beyond the reach of her demure mamma. She was
always in spirits, often good-natured, and kept everything in
lively motion, you may be sure. She found it not unpleasant,
in rich houses, to escape some of those little domestic
parsimonies which the world saw not in her own; and to secure
this felicity she could sometimes lay great restraints upon
herself, for as much as twenty-four hours. She seemed a little
out of place, certainly, amid the precise proprieties of Mrs.
Meredith's establishment. But Blanche and her mother still held
their place in society, and it was nothing to Mrs. Meredith who
came to her doors, but only from what other doors they came.
She would have liked to see all "the best houses" connected by
secret galleries or underground passages, of which she and a
few others should hold the keys. A guest properly presented
could then go the rounds of all unerringly, leaving his card at
each, while improper acquaintances in vain howled for admission
at the outer wall. For the rest, her ideal of social happiness
was a series of perfectly ordered entertainments, at each of
which there should be precisely the same guests, the same
topics, the same supper, and the same ennui.
XI.
DESCENSUS AVERNI.
MALBONE stood one morning on the pier behind the house. A two
days' fog was dispersing. The southwest breeze rippled the
deep blue water; sailboats, blue, red, and green, were darting
about like white-winged butterflies; sloops passed and
repassed, cutting the air with the white and slender points of
their gaff-topsails. The liberated sunbeams spread and
penetrated everywhere, and even came up to play (reflected from
the water) beneath the shadowy, overhanging counters of dark
vessels. Beyond, the atmosphere was still busy in rolling away
its vapors, brushing the last gray fringes from the low hills,
and leaving over them only the thinnest aerial veil. Farther
down the bay, the pale tower of the crumbling fort was now
shrouded, now revealed, then hung with floating lines of vapor
as with banners.
Hope came down on the pier to Malbone, who was looking at the
boats. He saw with surprise that her calm brow was a little
clouded, her lips compressed, and her eyes full of tears.
"Philip," she said, abruptly, "do you love me?"
"Do you doubt it?" said he, smiling, a little uneasily.
Fixing her eyes upon him, she said, more seriously: "There is a
more important question, Philip. Tell me truly, do you care
about Emilia?"
He started at the words, and looked eagerly in her face for an
explanation. Her expression only showed the most anxious
solicitude.
For one moment the wild impulse came up in his mind to put an
entire trust in this truthful woman, and tell her all. Then the
habit of concealment came back to him, the dull hopelessness of
a divided duty, and the impossibility of explanations. How
could he justify himself to her when he did not really know
himself? So he merely said, "Yes."
"She is your sister," he added, in an explanatory tone, after a
pause; and despised himself for the subterfuge. It is amazing
how long a man may be false in action before he ceases to
shrink from being false in words.
"Philip," said the unsuspecting Hope, "I knew that you cared
about her. I have seen you look at her with so much affection;
and then again I have seen you look cold and almost stern. She
notices it, I am sure she does, this changeableness. But this
is not why I ask the question. I think you must have seen
something else that I have been observing, and if you care
about her, even for my sake, it is enough."
Here Philip started, and felt relieved.
"You must be her friend," continued Hope, eagerly. "She has
changed her whole manner and habits very fast. Blanche
Ingleside and that set seem to have wholly controlled her, and
there is something reckless in all her ways. You are the only
person who can help her."
"How?"
"I do not know how," said Hope, almost impatiently. "You know
how. You have wonderful influence. You saved her before, and
will do it again. I put her in your hands."
"What can I do for her?" asked he, with a strange mingling of
terror and delight.
"Everything," said she. "If she has your society, she will not
care for those people, so much her inferiors in character.
Devote yourself to her for a time."
"And leave you?" said Philip, hesitatingly.
"Anything, anything," said she. "If I do not see you for a
month, I can bear it. Only promise me two things. First, that
you will go to her this very day. She dines with Mrs.
Ingleside."
Philip agreed.
"Then," said Hope, with saddened tones, "you must not say it
was I who sent you. Indeed you must not. That would spoil
all. Let her think that your own impulse leads you, and then
she will yield. I know Emilia enough for that."
Malbone paused, half in ecstasy, half in dismay. Were all the
events of life combining to ruin or to save him? This young
girl, whom he so passionately loved, was she to be thrust back
into his arms, and was he to be told to clasp her and be
silent? And that by Hope, and in the name of duty?
It seemed a strange position, even for him who was so eager for
fresh experiences and difficult combinations. At Hope's appeal
he was to risk Hope's peace forever; he was to make her sweet
sisterly affection its own executioner. In obedience to her
love he must revive Emilia's. The tender intercourse which he
had been trying to renounce as a crime must be rebaptized as a
duty. Was ever a man placed, he thought, in a position so
inextricable, so disastrous? What could he offer Emilia? How
could he explain to her his position? He could not even tell
her that it was at Hope's command he sought her.
He who is summoned to rescue a drowning man, knowing that he
himself may go down with that inevitable clutch around his
neck, is placed in some such situation as Philip's. Yet Hope
had appealed to him so simply, had trusted him so nobly!
Suppose that, by any self-control, or wisdom, or unexpected aid
of Heaven, he could serve both her and Emilia, was it not his
duty? What if it should prove that he was right in loving them
both, and had only erred when he cursed himself for tampering
with their destinies? Perhaps, after all, the Divine Love had
been guiding him, and at some appointed signal all these
complications were to be cleared, and he and his various loves
were somehow to be ingeniously provided for, and all be made
happy ever after.
He really grew quite tender and devout over these meditations.
Phil was not a conceited fellow, by any means, but he had been
so often told by women that their love for him had been a
blessing to their souls, that he quite acquiesced in being a
providential agent in that particular direction. Considered as
a form of self-sacrifice, it was not without its pleasures.
Malbone drove that afternoon to Mrs. Ingleside's charming
abode, whither a few ladies were wont to resort, and a great
many gentlemen. He timed his call between the hours of dining
and driving, and made sure that Emilia had not yet emerged.
Two or three equipages beside his own were in waiting at the
gate, and gay voices resounded from the house. A servant
received him at the door, and taking him for a tardy guest,
ushered him at once into the dining-room. He was indifferent to
this, for he had been too often sought as a guest by Mrs.
Ingleside to stand on any ceremony beneath her roof.
That fair hostess, in all the beauty of her shoulders, rose to
greet him, from a table where six or eight guests yet lingered
over flowers and wine. The gentlemen were smoking, and some of
the ladies were trying to look at ease with cigarettes.
Malbone knew the whole company, and greeted them with his
accustomed ease. He would not have been embarrassed if they
had been the Forty Thieves. Some of them, indeed, were not so
far removed from that fabled band, only it was their fortunes,
instead of themselves, that lay in the jars of oil.
"You find us all here," said Mrs. Ingleside, sweetly. "We will
wait till the gentlemen finish their cigars, before driving."
"Count me in, please," said Blanche, in her usual vein of
frankness. "Unless mamma wishes me to conclude my weed on the
Avenue. It would be fun, though. Fancy the dismay of the
Frenchmen and the dowagers!"
"And old Lambert," said one of the other girls, delightedly.
"Yes," said Blanche. "The elderly party from the rural
districts, who talks to us about the domestic virtues of the
wife of his youth."
"Thinks women should cruise with a broom at their mast-heads,
like Admiral somebody in England," said another damsel, who was
rolling a cigarette for a midshipman.
"You see we do not follow the English style," said the smooth
hostess to Philip. "Ladies retiring after dinner! After all,
it is a coarse practice. You agree with me, Mr. Malbone?"
"Speak your mind," said Blanche, coolly. "Don't say yes if
you'd rather not. Because we find a thing a bore, you've no
call to say so."
"I always say," continued the matron, "that the presence of
woman is needed as a refining influence."
Malbone looked round for the refining influences. Blanche was
tilted back in her chair, with one foot on the rung of the
chair before her, resuming a loud-toned discourse with Count
Posen as to his projected work on American society. She was
trying to extort a promise that she should appear in its pages,
which, as we all remember, she did. One of her attendant nymphs
sat leaning her elbows on the table, "talking horse" with a
gentleman who had an undoubted professional claim to a
knowledge of that commodity. Another, having finished her
manufactured cigarette, was making the grinning midshipman open
his lips wider and wider to receive it. Mrs. Ingleside was
talking in her mincing way with a Jew broker, whose English was
as imperfect as his morals, and who needed nothing to make him
a millionnaire but a turn of bad luck for somebody else. Half
the men in the room would have felt quite ill at ease in any
circle of refined women, but there was not one who did not feel
perfectly unembarrassed around Mrs. Ingleside's board.
"Upon my word," thought Malbone, "I never fancied the English
after-dinner practice, any more than did Napoleon. But if this
goes on, it is the gentlemen who ought to withdraw. Cannot
somebody lead the way to the drawing-room, and leave the ladies
to finish their cigars?"
Till now he had hardly dared to look at Emilia. He saw with a
thrill of love that she was the one person in the room who
appeared out of place or ill at ease. She did not glance at
him, but held her cigarette in silence and refused to light it.
She had boasted to him once of having learned to smoke at
school.
"What's the matter, Emmy?" suddenly exclaimed Blanche. "Are
you under a cloud, that you don't blow one?"
"Blanche, Blanche," said her mother, in sweet reproof. "Mr.
Malbone, what shall I do with this wild girl? Such a light way
of talking! But I can assure you that she is really very fond
of the society of intellectual, superior men. I often tell her
that they are, after all, her most congenial associates. More
so than the young and giddy."
"You'd better believe it," said the unabashed damsel. "Take
notice that whenever I go to a dinner-party I look round for a
clergyman to drink wine with."
"Incorrigible!" said the caressing mother. "Mr. Malbone would
hardly imagine you had been bred in a Christian land."
"I have, though," retorted Blanche. "My esteemed parent always
accustomed me to give up something during Lent,--champagne, or
the New York Herald, or something."
The young men roared, and, had time and cosmetics made it
possible, Mrs. Ingleside would have blushed becomingly. After
all, the daughter was the better of the two. Her bluntness was
refreshing beside the mother's suavity; she had a certain
generosity, too, and in a case of real destitution would have
lent her best ear-rings to a friend.
By this time Malbone had edged himself to Emilia's side. "Will
you drive with me?" he murmured in an undertone.
She nodded slightly, abruptly, and he withdrew again.
"It seems barbarous," said he aloud, "to break up the party.
But I must claim my promised drive with Miss Emilia."
Blanche looked up, for once amazed, having heard a different
programme arranged. Count Posen looked up also. But he thought
he must have misunderstood Emilia's acceptance of his previous
offer to drive her; and as he prided himself even more on his
English than on his gallantry, he said no more. It was no great
matter. Young Jones's dog-cart was at the door, and always
opened eagerly its arms to anybody with a title.
XII.
A NEW ENGAGEMENT.
TEN days later Philip came into Aunt Jane's parlor, looking
excited and gloomy, with a letter in his hand. He put it down
on her table without its envelope,--a thing that always
particularly annoyed her. A letter without its envelope, she
was wont to say, was like a man without a face, or a key
without a string,--something incomplete, preposterous. As
usual, however, he strode across her prejudices, and said, "I
have something to tell you. It is a fact."
"Is it?" said Aunt Jane, curtly. "That is refreshing in these
times."
"A good beginning," said Kate. "Go on. You have prepared us
for something incredible."
"You will think it so," said Malbone. "Emilia is engaged to
Mr. John Lambert." And he went out of the room.
"Good Heavens!" said Aunt Jane, taking off her spectacles.
"What a man! He is ugly enough to frighten the neighboring
crows. His face looks as if it had fallen together out of
chaos, and the features had come where it had pleased Fate.
There is a look of industrious nothingness about him, such as
busy dogs have. I know the whole family. They used to bake our
bread."
"I suppose they are good and sensible," said Kate.
"Like boiled potatoes, my dear," was the response,--"wholesome
but perfectly uninteresting."
"Is he of that sort?" asked Kate.
"No," said her aunt; "not uninteresting, but ungracious. But I
like an ungracious man better than one like Philip, who hangs
over young girls like a soft-hearted avalanche. This Lambert
will govern Emilia, which is what she needs."
"She will never love him," said Kate, "which is the one thing
she needs. There is nothing that could not be done with Emilia
by any person with whom she was in love; and nothing can ever
be done with her by anybody else. No good will ever come of
this, and I hope she will never marry him."
With this unusual burst, Kate retreated to Hope. Hope took the
news more patiently than any one, but with deep solicitude. A
worldly marriage seemed the natural result of the Ingleside
influence, but it had not occurred to anybody that it would
come so soon. It had not seemed Emilia's peculiar temptation;
and yet nobody could suppose that she looked at John Lambert
through any glamour of the affections.
Mr. John Lambert was a millionnaire, a politician, and a
widower. The late Mrs. Lambert had been a specimen of that
cheerful hopelessness of temperament that one finds abundantly
developed among the middle-aged women of country towns. She
enjoyed her daily murders in the newspapers, and wept profusely
at the funerals of strangers. On every occasion, however
felicitous, she offered her condolences in a feeble voice, that
seemed to have been washed a great many times and to have
faded. But she was a good manager, a devoted wife, and was more
cheerful at home than elsewhere, for she had there plenty of
trials to exercise her eloquence, and not enough joy to make it
her duty to be doleful. At last her poor, meek, fatiguing voice
faded out altogether, and her husband mourned her as heartily
as she would have bemoaned the demise of the most insignificant
neighbor. After her death, being left childless, he had
nothing to do but to make money, and he naturally made it.
Having taken his primary financial education in New England, he
graduated at that great business university, Chicago, and then
entered on the public practice of wealth in New York.
Aunt Jane had perhaps done injustice to the personal appearance
of Mr. John Lambert. His features were irregular, but not
insignificant, and there was a certain air of slow command
about him, which made some persons call him handsome. He was
heavily built, with a large, well-shaped head, light whiskers
tinged with gray, and a sort of dusty complexion. His face was
full of little curved wrinkles, as if it were a slate just
ruled for sums in long division, and his small blue eyes winked
anxiously a dozen different ways, as if they were doing the
sums. He seemed to bristle with memorandum-books, and kept
drawing them from every pocket, to put something down. He was
slow of speech, and his very heaviness of look added to the
impression of reserved power about the man.
All his career in life had been a solid progress, and his
boldest speculations seemed securer than the legitimate
business of less potent financiers. Beginning business life by
peddling gingerbread on a railway train, he had developed such
a genius for railway management as some men show for chess or
for virtue; and his accumulating property had the momentum of a
planet.
He had read a good deal at odd times, and had seen a great deal
of men. His private morals were unstained, he was equable and
amiable, had strong good sense, and never got beyond his depth.
He had travelled in Europe and brought home many statistics,
some new thoughts, and a few good pictures selected by his
friends. He spent his money liberally for the things needful to
his position, owned a yacht, bred trotting-horses, and had
founded a theological school. He submitted to these and other
social observances from a vague sense of duty as an American
citizen; his real interest lay in business and in politics.
Yet he conducted these two vocations on principles
diametrically opposite. In business he was more honest than
the average; in politics he had no conception of honesty, for
he could see no difference between a politician and any other
merchandise. He always succeeded in business, for he thoroughly
understood its principles; in politics he always failed in the
end, for he recognized no principles at all. In business he
was active, resolute, and seldom deceived; in politics he was
equally active, but was apt to be irresolute, and was deceived
every day of his life. In both cases it was not so much from
love of power that he labored, as from the excitement of the
game. The larger the scale the better he liked it; a large
railroad operation, a large tract of real estate, a big and
noisy statesman,--these investments he found irresistible.
On which of his two sets of principles he would manage a wife
remained to be proved. It is the misfortune of what are called
self-made men in America, that, though early accustomed to the
society of men of the world, they often remain utterly
unacquainted with women of the world, until those charming
perils are at last sprung upon them in full force, at New York
or Washington. John Lambert at forty was as absolutely
ignorant of the qualities and habits of a cultivated woman as
of the details of her toilet. The plain domesticity of his
departed wife he had understood and prized; he remembered her
household ways as he did her black alpaca dress; indeed, except
for that item of apparel, she was not so unlike himself. In
later years he had seen the women of society; he had heard them
talk; he had heard men talk about them, wittily or wickedly, at
the clubs; he had perceived that a good many of them wished to
marry him, and yet, after all, he knew no more of them than of
the rearing of humming-birds or orchids,--dainty, tropical
things which he allowed his gardener to raise, he keeping his
hands off, and only paying the bills. Whether there was in
existence a class of women who were both useful and
refined,--any intermediate type between the butterfly and the
drudge,--was a question which he had sometimes asked himself,
without having the materials to construct a reply.
With imagination thus touched and heart unfilled, this man had
been bewitched from the very first moment by Emilia. He kept
it to himself, and heard in silence the criticisms made at the
club-windows. To those perpetual jokes about marriage, which
are showered with such graceful courtesy about the path of
widowers, he had no reply; or at most would only admit that he
needed some elegant woman to preside over his establishment,
and that he had better take her young, as having habits less
fixed. But in his secret soul he treasured every tone of this
girl's voice, every glance of her eye, and would have kept in a
casket of gold and diamonds the little fragrant glove she once
let fall. He envied the penniless and brainless boys, who, with
ready gallantry, pushed by him to escort her to her carriage;
and he lay awake at night to form into words the answer he
ought to have made, when she threw at him some careless phrase,
and gave him the opportunity to blunder.
And she, meanwhile, unconscious of his passion, went by him in
her beauty, and caught him in the net she never threw. Emilia
was always piquant, because she was indifferent; she had never
made an effort in her life, and she had no respect for persons.
She was capable of marrying for money, perhaps, but the
sacrifice must all be completed in a single vow. She would not
tutor nor control herself for the purpose. Hand and heart must
be duly transferred, she supposed, whenever the time was up;
but till then she must be free.
This with her was not art, but necessity; yet the most
accomplished art could have devised nothing so effectual to
hold her lover. His strong sense had always protected him from
the tricks of matchmaking mammas and their guileless maids.
Had Emilia made one effort to please him, once concealed a
dislike, once affected a preference, the spell might have been
broken. Had she been his slave, he might have become a very
unyielding or a very heedless despot. Making him her slave, she
kept him at the very height of bliss. This king of railways and
purchaser of statesmen, this man who made or wrecked the
fortunes of others by his whim, was absolutely governed by a
reckless, passionate, inexperienced, ignorant girl.
And this passion was made all the stronger by being a good deal
confined to his own breast. Somehow it was very hard for him
to talk sentiment to Emilia; he instinctively saw she disliked
it, and indeed he liked her for not approving the stiff phrases
which were all he could command. Nor could he find any relief
of mind in talking with others about her. It enraged him to be
clapped on the back and congratulated by his compeers; and he
stopped their coarse jokes, often rudely enough. As for the
young men at the club, he could not bear to hear them mention
his darling's name, however courteously. He knew well enough
that for them the betrothal had neither dignity nor purity;
that they held it to be as much a matter of bargain and sale as
their worst amours. He would far rather have talked to the
theological professors whose salaries he paid, for he saw that
they had a sort of grave, formal tradition of the sacredness of
marriage. And he had a right to claim that to him it was
sacred, at least as yet; all the ideal side of his nature was
suddenly developed; he walked in a dream; he even read
Tennyson.
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