At Last Part 5

The other looked down at her with simple fearlessness.

"'For it was founded upon a rock!'" she repeated softly; yet the exultant ring of her accent vibrated upon the ear like a joyous challenge.

Rosa's fretful movement was involuntary.

"Mine would drag in the sand at every turn of the tide, every rise of the wind, if I were to follow your advice, and say 'yes' to the pertinacious Alfred," she said reproachfully.

"Don't say advice, dear!" corrected the other. "I only endeavored to convince you that there must be latent tenderness beneath your sufferance of Mr. Branch's devotion; that if you really were averse to the thought of marrying him, you could not take pleasure in his society or enjoy the marks of his attachment which are apparent to you and to everybody else."

"Can't you understand," said the beauty, petulantly, "that it is one thing to flirt with a man in public, and another to cherish his image in private? There is no better touchstone of affection than the holiness and calm of an hour like this. If Frederic were with you, the scene would be the fairer, the season more sacred for its a.s.sociation with thoughts of him and his love. Whereas, my Alfred's adoring plat.i.tudes would disgust me with the sunset, with the world, and with myself, for permitting him to haunt my presence and hang upon my smile--foppish barnacle that he is! If you knew how I despise myself sometimes!"

"Dear Rosa! I shall never try again to persuade that you care for him as a woman should for the man G.o.d intended her to marry. But why not act worthily of yourself--justly to him, and reject him decidedly?"

"Because"--her face shrewd and wilful as it had been sorrowful just now--"I am by no means certain that I can do better than to marry him.

He is rich, good-looking (so people say!), well-born, gentlemanly, and pleasant of temper. An imposing array of advantages, you see! I might go further, and fare very much worse. We shall not expect to pa.s.s our days in gazing at sunsets and walking in the moonlight, you know. It is not every woman who can marry the man she loves best. While the right to select and to woo is usurped by the masculine portion of the community, it must, perforce, be Hobson's choice with an uncountable majority of feminines. I should not complain. The stall allotted to me by Hobson--alias Fate--might hold a worse-conditioned animal than my wors.h.i.+pping swain."

"What a wicked rattle you are!" Mabel said, affecting to box her ears.

"I could not love you if I believed you to be in earnest. As to your figure of the stabled steed--this disapproving customer has the consolation that she need not accept him, unless she wishes to do so.

She has the invaluable privilege of saying 'no' as often and obstinately as she pleases."

"I deny it," said Rosa, perversely. "Parents, in this age, do not make a custom of locking up refractory daughters in nunneries or garrets until they consent to wed Baron Buncombe or my Lord Nozoo, but there are, nevertheless, compulsory marriages in plenty. Society warns me to make a creditable match, upon penalty, if I decline, of being pointed out to the succeeding--and a fast-succeeding generation it is! as a disappointed old maid--pa.s.see belle, who squandered her capital of fascinations, and has become a pauper upon public toleration, while my mother, sisters, and brothers are growing impatient at my many and profitless flirtations, and anxious to see me 'settled.' My mother's pet text, since I was sixteen, has been her prayerful desire that I, the last of her nestlings, should make choice of a tenable bough and helpful partner, and set up a separate establishment before she dies. When that event occurs, I shall be, in effect, homeless--a boarder around upon my rebukeful relatives, who 'always thought how my trifling would end,' and who will be forever scribbling 'vanitas vanitatum,' upon the tombstone of my departed youth--my day of beaux and offers. You may shake your head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than I, should your brother see cause to refuse his consent to your marriage with Mr. Chilton. He could, and probably would, coerce you into another alliance before you were twenty-one. There are so many ways of letting the life out of a woman's heart, when it is already faint from disappointment! The spirit is oftener broken by unyielding, but not seemingly cruel pressure, than by outrageous violence. And Winston would show himself an adept in such arts, if occasion offered."

"Rosa Tazewell! you are speaking of my brother, my friend and benefactor! one of the best, n.o.blest, most disinterested creatures Heaven ever made!" cried Mabel, erect and indignant. "You have no warrant--I shall never give you the right--to asperse him in my presence. He is incapable of cruelty or unfairness. It is my duty to obey him, but it is no less a pleasure, for he is a hundred-fold wiser and better than I am--knows far more truly what is for my real advantage. As to his conduct in this affair of Frederic and myself, you cannot deny that it has been generous and consistent throughout. He has been cautious--never hars.h.!.+"

"So!" said Rosa, scrutinizing the flushed countenance of the other, her own full of intense meaning, "you HAVE had your misgivings!"

Mabel reddened more warmly.

"Misgivings! What do you mean?"

"That the uncalled-for vehemence of your defence is a proof of disturbed confidence, of wanting belief in the infallibility of your semi-deity.

The trailing robes of divinity have been blown aside by a chance breath of suspicion, and you had a glimpse of the clay feet. I am glad of it. Scepticism is the parent of rebellion, and the time is coming when fealty to your betrothed may demand disloyalty to the power that now is."

Mabel's smile was meant to be careless, but it was only uneasy, and gave the lie direct to her a.s.severation.

"I have no apprehensions of such a conflict. Winston's word is as good as another man's oath. It is pledged to my marriage with Frederic Chilton, in the event of the prosperous issue of his inquiries into his, Frederic's, character and prospects. That these will be answered favorably, I have the word of another, who is every whit as trustworthy.

Where is there room for doubt?"

The brunette shook her head--unconvinced.

"Have your own way! I can afford to abide the showing of the logic of events."

"And I!" retorted Mabel, hastily, turning from her, without attempting to dissemble her chagrin, to answer a knock at the door.

It was a servant, with two letters. The annoyance pa.s.sed from her brow, like the sheerest mist, as she read the superscriptions--one in her brother's handwriting, the other in Frederic's.

Rosa interfered to prevent the breaking of the seals.

"I am going to leave you to the undisturbed enjoyment of your feast,"

she said, in her most winsome manner. "But--won't it taste the sweeter if your antepast is the delight of forgiveness? Say you are not angry with me--mia cara!"

"You are a ridiculous child!" Mabel bent to kiss the pleading lips, then the great, melting eyes. "Who could be out of temper with you for half a minute at a time? You did try my patience with your nonsense, but since it WAS nonsense, I have forgotten it all, and love you none the less for your prankish humor--you gypsy!"

"She calls my prophecies humbug--turns a deaf ear to my warnings!" cried the incorrigible rattle, clasping her hands above her head and rolling her eyes tragically. "I have a lively appreciation, at this instant, of Ca.s.sandra's agonies when Troilus named her 'our mad sister!'--

'Woe! woe! woe!

Let us pay betimes A moiety of that ma.s.s of moans to come!'"

Laughing anew at her frantic rush from the chamber, Mabel sat down in the broad window-seat to read her love-letter.

Frederic was too manly in feeling and habit of speech to deal in florid rhapsodies, but each line had its message from his heart to hers. He loved her purely and in truth, and there was not a sentence that did not tell her this, by inference, if not directly. He trusted her--and this, too, he told her, more as a husband might the wife of years than a lover of her he had won so lately. Their hopes were the same and their lives, and she dwelt longest upon the sketched plans for the future of these.

It brought him closer to her than anything else--put her secret and reluctant imaginations of evil, and Rosa's daring insinuations, out of sight and recollection. She read slowly, and with frequent pauses, that she might take in the exquisite flavor of this and that phrase of endearment; set before herself in beauty and distinctness the scenes he portrayed as the adornment of the prospect which was theirs.

The second and yet more deliberate perusal over, she folded the sheet with lingering touches to every corner, thrust it into the envelope, and drew it forth again to peep once more at the signature--"Forever and truly, your own Frederic;" pressed it to her lips, then to her heart, and bestowed it securely in her writing-desk, before she unclosed her brother's epistle.

With her finger upon the seal--a big drop of red wax, like a petrified blood-gout, stamped with the Aylett coat-of-arms--she leaned through the cas.e.m.e.nt to watch for the flutter of Rosa's white dress among the vari-colored maples shading the lawn--sang a clear, sweet second to the song that ascended to her eyrie:

"Why weep ye by the tide, ladye?

Why weep ye by the tide?

I'll wed ye to my youngest son, And ye shall be his bride.

And ye shall be his bride, ladye, Sae comely to be seen; But aye she loot the tears down fa'

For lock o' Hazeldean."

"MY DEAR MABEL" [wrote the lord of Ridgeley]--"I wish you, so soon as you receive this, to communicate with Jenkyns and Smythe concerning the new parlor furniture I ordered from them. In talking it over, Clara and I have decided that it had better be covered with maroon, instead of green, as you advised. I enclose a sample of damask which they must match exactly. I would I write direct to them, but think it likely that Jenkyns, the managing man of the firm, is in your neighborhood at this time. He told me, when I was in town, of his intention to visit Mrs.

Wilson, his sister, I believe, who lives on the White Oak road, about three miles from Ridgeley. Send for him, and put the samples into his hands. If he cannot get the precise color in Richmond, let him order it from New York.

"The carpets for the parlor, dining-room, and Clara's chamber I have bought in Lowell. Clara accompanied me thither, and gave me the benefit of her taste in the selection. I have resolved, also, to purchase wallpaper in Boston to match these. Say as much to Jenkyns. I shall have the boxes directed to his care and instruct him further respecting making the carpets and hanging the paper when I return.

"Ask Roberts (the mason) whether it will be practicable to build a fire-place in the large lower hall. Another chimney would be an unsightly appendage to the roof, but Clara agrees with me, since studying the plan of the house I brought on for her inspection, that a flue could be run through the closet in your room into the rear one of the west chimneys. She thinks the hall must be freezing cold in winter, and caught eagerly at my idea that a blazing fire at one end would lighten the sombre effect of the oaken wainscot and lofty ceiling.

I proposed to tear down the panelling, but she was horrified at the thought. I could not take more pride and interest in preserving the antique character of the home of my forefathers than does she. She will have it that the hall, thus improved, and hung with a few old pictures, some bits of ancient armor, and carpeted with maroon and green will be truly baronial. You and she will agree admirably in your enthusiastic love of the venerable, and in your aesthetic tastes. I congratulate myself hourly upon my good fortune in securing such a companion for myself, and such an instructress for yourself. You cannot fail to derive infinite benefit from intercourse with her.

"This brings me to another subject to which I desire to call your immediate attention. I wish her to select a couple of dresses suitable for your wear on the night of our reception-party, and at others which will, undoubtedly, be given in our honor. She objects to doing this unless I obtain from you a written request that she should thus aid me.

She fears you may consider her action 'premature and officious.' Write to her at once, requesting her to do this sisterly favor for you, setting forth your distance from the city, the meagre a.s.sortment of the goods to be had in the Richmond stores, etc., and giving her carte blanche as to cost and style. It will be an inestimable advantage to your appearance on the occasions named should she oblige you in this particular. I earnestly desire that you should look your best at your introduction to her."

"'Maroon and green!' a 'baronial' hall, and new party-dresses for insignificant me!" Mabel stopped to say aloud in great amus.e.m.e.nt. "What would my sage brother have said to such paltry memoranda six months ago?

He is an apt scholar, or he has an able teacher. Ah, well! love is a marvellous transmogrifier!"

With this apothegm from the storehouse of her lately acquired wisdom, she pa.s.sed to the next paragraph.

"Now for another matter about which I meant to write to you yesterday, but I was prevented by our expedition to Lowell. The evenings I of course devote to Clara. I have not been so engrossed by my own very important concerns as to neglect yours. I stopped a day in Philadelphia, illy as I could afford the time, to make such investigations as I could, without exciting invidious suspicion, into the character of the person whom I found domesticated at Ridgeley on my return from my summer tour.

The information I picked up in that cautious city was so meagre and tantalizing as to provoke me into the belief that he had selected his references with an eye to the slenderness of their knowledge of his personal history. Accident, however, has since placed within my reach a means of learning all that I wish to know. Without wearying you with explanations, which, indeed, I have no time to write--being engaged to drive out with Clara in an hour from this time--I will transcribe a portion of a letter received by me, two days since, from a gentleman of unexceptional standing, and upon whose word you may safely depend.

"He says: 'In reply to your queries as to my acquaintances.h.i.+p with one Frederic Chilton, now a practising lawyer in the city of Philadelphia, I would, if conscience permitted, repay your frankness by evasion of a disagreeable truth. But in the circ.u.mstances which induced your appeal, I have no option. Hesitation or concealment would be unkind and dishonorable. I knew the man you speak of well--I may say intimately, while we were fellow-students in the----law school, in 18--. He was then--what I have but too much reason for believing him at this day--a plausible, unprincipled man of pleasure. Our intercourse, which commenced at the card-table, terminated with a severe horsewhipping I administered to him in punishment of an offence offered a married lady--a relative of my own. Taking advantage of the protracted absence of her husband, who was a naval officer, he offered her many attentions, received by herself as tokens of innocent and friendly regard, until he forgot himself so far as to make her open and insulting proposals, even urging her to consent to an elopement, and threatening, in the event of her refusal, to ruin her by infamous calumnies. Her father was infirm; her husband in a foreign land. His base persecution would have met with no chastis.e.m.e.nt, had not I espoused the terrified woman's cause.

These are the bare facts of the case. He merited a flogging--as you, a chivalric Virginian, will admit. I--a Northern man, with cooler blood, but I hope, as true a sense of honor and right as your own--inflicted this, as I am prepared to testify before any number of witnesses.'"

[Mabel was reading very fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb with every word.]

"The above is a verbatim copy of that portion of my friend's letter which pertains to your affair," continued Mr. Aylett. "I shall write to Mrs. Sutton's protege by the mail that carries this, informing him of my opportune discovery, through no instrumentality of his providing, of the poverty of his claims to the t.i.tle of gentleman, and the audacity of his pretensions to my sister's hand. Have what letters, etc., you have received from him ready packed to return to his address when I come home. My princ.i.p.al regret, in the review of the unfortunate entanglement, is that he ever visited Ridgeley and was known in the vicinity as your suitor. You will suffer from this, in the future, more than you can now suppose. A woman hardly ever outlives such a stigma.