Boston Neighbours In Town and Out Part 5

"I thought he was a confirmed old bachelor," said the lady; "I wonder where he met her! I wonder whatever made him think of her! I hope they'll be happy, but I don't know. Marian is a good girl, but she has so little sense!"

"I should think any man ought to be happy with Miss Carter," said the gentleman, warmly; "I only hope he'll make her happy. Hayward's a very good fellow, but he'll frighten that little creature to death the first time he swears at her."

"Colonel Hayward is a _gentleman_, William; he would never swear before a lady."

"I wouldn't trust him--when she's his wife."

Nevertheless, Mrs. Robert Hayward has not yet been placed in danger of such a catastrophe, not even when her husband has been laid up with rheumatic gout. To be sure, her ministrations on those occasions were more soothing than those of the boys. Perhaps she was even a little disappointed in her craving for excitement, and her new household ran almost too smoothly. The boys gave no trouble, though they were aghast on first hearing that the Colonel really contemplated matrimony, and Bob reproached himself in no measured terms for having drawn attention to the "work of Arachne," and driven his uncle to rush madly upon fate. But Marian made it her particular request that things should go on as before, which pleased her bridegroom, though he had never dreamed of any change; and when they came to know her, she pleased the boys as well.

"It's easy enough to get on with Aunt Marian," Bob would say; "she's such a dear little fool! She swallows everything men tell her, no matter how outrageous, and thinks if we want the moon, we must have it. If only Minna would turn out anything like her! But no; they are ruining all the girls now with their colleges. I doubt if Aunt Marian isn't the last of her day and generation."

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[Ill.u.s.tration]

WHY I MARRIED ELEANOR

It has often been remarked that if every man would truthfully tell how he wooed and won his wife, the world would be the gainer by a number of romances of real life which would put to shame the novelist's skill.

"How" is the word usually employed in such cases, and, indeed, properly enough. There are a number of marriages where the reason is sufficiently palpable, and where any stronger one fails there is the all-sufficing one of propinquity. But none of these were allowed in the case of my marriage with Eleanor. Why did I do it? was the absorbing nine days'

wonder; for, as was unanimously and justly observed, if it were a matter of propinquity alone, why did I not marry----? But I antic.i.p.ate.

To begin at the beginning, then, and to tell my tale as truthfully as if I were on oath; there was no reason why Eleanor, or any other girl, should not have married me. I was by all odds the best match in New England, being the only son and heir of Roger Greenway, third of the name. Whether my father could ever have made a fortune any more than I could is doubtful; but he inherited a considerable estate, so well invested that it only needed letting alone to grow, and for this he had the good sense. Large as it was when I came into it, it was more than doubled by my prospective wealth on the other side, for my mother was the oldest of the four daughters of old Jonathan Carver, the last of the Ma.s.sachusetts vikings whose names were words of power in the China seas.

My father was an elderly man when he married, and my mother was no longer young. She and her sisters were handsome, high-bred women, with every accomplishment and virtue under the sun. They did not, to use the vulgar phrase, marry off fast. Indeed, the phrase and the very idea would have shocked them. They were beings of far too much importance to be so lightly dealt with. When, only a few years before her father's death, Louisa married Roger Greenway, it was allowed by their whole world to be a most fitting thing; and when I appeared in due season, the old gentleman was so delighted that he made a will directly, tying up his whole estate as tightly as possible for future great-grandchildren.

Some years after his death, my Aunt Clara, the second daughter, married a Unitarian clergyman of good family, weak lungs, aesthetic tastes, and small property, who never preached. He lived long enough to catalogue all our family pictures and bric-a-brac, and arrange the "Carver Collection" for the Art Museum, and then died of consumption soon after my own father, leaving no children. By the time these events had pa.s.sed with all due observances, Aunt Frances and Aunt Grace thought it was hardly worth while to marry; there had been a sufficient number of weddings in the family, and they were very comfortable together--and then how could they ever want for an object, with that fine boy of dear Louisa's to bring up? We all had separate households; but my aunts were always at "Greenways," my place on the borders of Brookline and West Roxbury, which my father had bought when young and spent the greater part of his life in bringing to a state of perfection; and my mother and I were apt to pa.s.s the hottest summer months at Manchester-by-the-Sea, where Aunt Clara, during her married life, had reared a little fairy palace of her own; and to spend much of the winter at the great old Carver house on Mount Vernon Street, which Jonathan Carver had left to his unmarried daughters for life.

I was the first object of four devoted and conscientious women. The results were different from what might have been expected. The world said I would be spoiled, and then marvelled that I was not; but my mother's and aunts' conscientiousness outran their devotion, and they all felt, though they would not acknowledge it to each other, that I had rather disappointed them. I grew up a big, handsome young fellow enough, very young-looking for my age, with a trick of blus.h.i.+ng like a girl at anything or nothing, which gave me much pain, though it won upon all the old ladies, who said it showed the purity of my mind and the goodness of my heart.

By the way in which my moral qualities were always selected for praise, it will be divined that but little could be said for my intellectual.

Had I been a few steps lower on the social ladder, something might have been said against them. It was only by infinite pains on my own part and that of the highly salaried tutor who coached me, that I was ever squeezed through Harvard University. I did squeeze through, and with an unblemished moral record; my Aunt Clara, the pious one of the family, said it might have been worse, and my mother, to whom my commencement day was a blessed release from four years of perpetual worry, said she was highly gratified at the way in which dear Roger had withstood the temptations of college life. For this I deserved no credit. The temptations of which she thought were none to me. Where would have been the excitement of gambling, when I had nothing to lose? and one brought up from infancy in an atmosphere of fastidious refinement the baser female attractions repelled at once, before they had the chance of charming. I hated tobacco, and liquor of all kinds made me deadly sick.

A more subtle snare was set for me.

Time slipped away for the first few years after I left college. We all went to Europe and returned. I pottered a little about my place, and discharged social duties, and such few local political ones as a position like mine entails even in America. I did not know why I did not do more, or what more to do. I did not think I was stupid exactly; it seemed to me that I could do something, if I only knew what. Perhaps I was slow--I certainly was in thought; but sometimes I startled myself by hasty action before I thought at all, which gave me a dim consciousness of the presence of my "genius." My mother's expectations had just begun to take an apologetic turn, when my Aunt Frances, the clever one of the family, put forward a bright idea. She said that it was all very well for a young man who had his own way to make in the world to wait awhile; a man with my opportunities could never be in a satisfactory position to employ them until he was married. While I remained single there must always be speculations, expectations, and reports. Once let me be married, and all these worries, troublesome and distracting at present, would receive their proper quietus. The sisters all applauded her penetration, and all said with one voice that if Roger were to marry, he could not do better than--but I antic.i.p.ate again.

Greenways and the neighbouring estates were large, and the only very near neighbours we had were the Days and the Beechers; in fact, they were both my tenants. When my father bought the place there was an old farm-house on it, which, though it stood rather near the spot where he wished to build, was too well built and too picturesque to pull down.

Old Sanderson, our head gardener for many a year, lived there with his wife, and their house, with its own pretty garden and little greenhouse, was one of my favourite haunts when a child. When the old couple died, nearly at the same time, Sanderson had long left off active work, and his deputy and successor, Macfarlane, lived in another house some distance off. My mother said of course she could never put him into the Garden House with all those children; she could never put another servant there at all; she hated to pull it down; she did not know what to do with it. My Aunt Grace, the impulsive one of the family, broke in, and all the others followed suit with, "Why would it not be just the thing for Katharine Day?"

Katharine Day had been Katharine Latham, an old school friend of my Aunt Grace. She was the daughter of a country clergyman, a pretty woman of fascinating manners, and her relations were very well bred, though poor.

The friends.h.i.+p was an excellent thing for her; I don't mean to say that it was not so for my aunt also, for I never knew a woman who could pay back a social debt to a superior more gracefully than Mrs. Day. She was always a little pitied as not having met with her deserts in marriage, though Mr. Day was a handsome man, with good connections and a fine tenor voice. He had some kind of an office with a very fair salary, but his wife said, and it was a thing generally understood, that they were very poor. They felt no shame, rather a sort of pride, in getting along so well in spite of it. They went everywhere, and all her richer friends admired Mrs. Day for being such a good manager, and dressing and entertaining so beautifully on positively nothing, and showed their admiration by deeds as well as words. One paid Phil's college expenses, another took Katie abroad, and they were always having all kinds of presents. They were invited everywhere in the height of the season, and always had tickets for the most reserved of reserved seats. My mother, or my guardian, for her, let them have the Garden House at a mere nothing of a rent, but we said that it was really a gain for us, they would take such beautiful care of it.

Phil Day, though he was some years younger than I, was my cla.s.smate in college, and graduated far ahead of me. My mother was consoled for his superiority by thinking what a nice intimate friend he was for me. That he was my intimate friend was settled for me by the universal verdict.

In reality I did not like him at all, but it would have been unkind to be as offish as I must have been to keep him from being always at my house, sailing my boats, riding my horses, playing at my billiard-table, smoking my cigars, and drinking my wines, as naturally as if he had been my brother, albeit I had a suspicion that these luxuries were not as harmless to Phil as they were to me. He was a clever, handsome fellow, and very popular. What I really disliked in him was his being such a terrible sn.o.b, but this was an accusation that it seemed particularly mean for me to make against him, even to my own mind.

Phil's sister Katie was worth a dozen of him. She was a beautiful creature, tall and lithe, with a rich colour coming and going under a clear olive skin, and starry dark eyes that seemed to shoot out rays of light for the whole length of her long lashes. She was highly accomplished, and always exquisitely dressed. Mrs. Day said it did not cost much, for dear Katie was so clever at making her own clothes. To be sure, she could not make her boots and gloves, her fans and furs, and these were of the choicest. Their price would have made a large hole in her father's salary, but probably he was never called upon to pay it--for I know my Aunt Grace, for one, thought nothing of giving her a whole box of gloves at a time. Katie inherited all her mother's fascination of manner and practical talent, and, like her, well knew how to pay her way. She was a great pet of my mother and aunts. She poured out tea, and sang after dinner, helped in their charity work, and chose their presents. They had an idea that I could marry whom I pleased, but I knew they felt I could not do better than marry Katie. It was their opinion, and that of every one else, that she deserved a prize in the matrimonial line. Providence evidently designed that she should get one, for, as all her friends remarked, "If Katie Day could do so beautifully with so little, what could she not do if she were rich?" Providence as evidently had destined me for the lucky man, and even the other young men bowed to manifest destiny in the united claims of property and propinquity.

The Beechers lived a little farther off the other way. About them and their dwelling there was no glamour of boyish memories. The bit of land on which it stood had always cut awkwardly into ours, and my father had longed to buy it; but it had some defect in the t.i.tle which could not be set right until the death of some old lady in the country. She died at last just about the time that he did, and in the confusion caused by his sudden death the land was snapped up by O'Neil, an Irishman, who turned a penny when he could get a chance by levying blackmail upon a neighbourhood--buying up bits of land, building tenement houses on them, and crowding them with the poorest cla.s.s of his country people, on the chance of being bought off at last at an exorbitant rate by the neighbouring proprietors.

In this present case O'Neil had mistaken his man. My guardian and first cousin once removed, John Greenway, was the last person alive to screw a penny out of. He would have borne any such infliction himself with Spartan firmness; judge with what calmness he endured it for a ward. He built a high wall on O'Neil's boundary, planted trees thickly around that, and then proceeded to hara.s.s the unhappy tenants by every means within his power and the letter of the law, so that they ran away in hordes without waiting for quarter-day. O'Neil failed at last, and my guardian bought in the concern for a song. Before this, however, O'Neil, in desperate straits, had made a few cheap alterations in the house, advertised it as a "gentleman's residence," and let it to the Beechers, who were only too glad to get so well-situated a house so low.

Mr. Beecher was well educated and of a good family, though he had no near relations who could do anything for him. He had married early a young lady much in the same condition, and had done but poorly in life, hampered in all his efforts by a delicate wife and a large family. When we bought the place I had not attained my legal majority; but I was old enough to have my wishes respected, and I said positively that I would not have him turned out. As I used to meet the poor old fellow--not that he was really old, though he looked to me a perfect Methuselah--with his grey head and s.h.i.+ning, well-brushed coat, trotting to the station, a good mile and a half off, at seven in the morning, through winter's cold and summer's heat; and back again after dark, for nine months in the year, my heart used to ache for him. But I could not tell him so, and of course there was precious little I could do for him. My mother and aunts were eminently charitable, but what could they do for Mrs. Beecher? Her hours and ways and thoughts were not as theirs. She did not come very often when they invited her, nor seem to enjoy herself very much when she did. There was but little use in taking her rare flowers and hothouse grapes, and they could not send her food and clothes as if she were a poor person. The Beecher house had a garden of its own, out of which Mr. Beecher, with a little help from his boys, contrived to get their fruit and vegetables, though it always looked in very poor order.

We were thankful that it was so well shut out from our view, and poor Mrs. Beecher was equally thankful that her boisterous boys and crying babies were so well shut in. My mother did not approve of her much, and said she must lack method not to get on better. Jonathan Carver's daughters had been so trained by their father that any one of them could have stepped into his counting-house and balanced his books at a minute's warning. They kept their own accounts, down to the last mill, by double entry, and were fond of saying that if you only did this you would always be able to manage well. They were most kind-hearted, when they saw their way how to be, but they had been so hara.s.sed from childhood up by begging letter-writers and agents for societies that they had a horror of leading people to expect anything from them; and as the Beechers evidently expected nothing, it was best that they should be left in that blissful condition. They were indeed painfully overwhelmed by their obligations in the matter of the house. I made the rent as low as I decently could, and put in improvements whenever I had the chance. I used to rack my brains to think what more I could do for them; but in all my wildest dreams it never occurred to me that I might give them a lift by marrying Eleanor.

Eleanor was their oldest child, and a year or two younger than Katie Day. She was really as plain as a girl has any right to be. She had the light eyelashes and freckles which often mar the effect of the prettiest red hair, and hers was not a pretty shade, but very common carrots. Her features and her figure were not bad exactly, and her motions had nothing awkward--one would never have noticed them in any way. It might have been better for her had she been strikingly ugly. Anything striking is enough for some clever girls to build upon; but whether Eleanor were clever or stupid, no one knew or cared to know. She was a good girl, and helped her mother, and looked after the younger children;--but then, she had to. Her very goodness was a mere matter of course, and had nothing for the imagination to dwell upon. She was not a bit more helpful to her mother than Katie Day was to hers; and if Katie's path of duty led to tr.i.m.m.i.n.g hats and writing notes, and Eleanor's to darning the children's stockings and was.h.i.+ng their faces, why, that was no fault in the one nor merit in the other.

I felt very sorry for Eleanor, when I thought of her at all, which was not often, but I could do even less for her than for her father. We used to invite them when we gave anything general, but they did not always come, and when we sent them tickets they often could not use them. They had not many other invitations, and could seldom accept any, on account of the cost of clothes and carriage hire. My mother, of course, could not take them about much, for there were our own family and the Days, whom she took everywhere, and who enjoyed going so much. I always asked Eleanor to dance, but as she was dreadfully afraid of me, I fear it gave her more pain than pleasure. She did not dance well, and I could not expect my friends to follow my example. Phil Day, indeed, once declared that he "drew the line at Eleanor Beecher." I remember longing to kick him for the speech, and that was the liveliest emotion I ever felt in connection with her.

Why I did not marry Katie is plainer--to myself at least. I came very near it, not once alone, but many times. I do not think that there was any man who could have seen her day after day, as I did, and not have fallen in love with her, unless there were some barrier in the way. Mine was fragile as a reed, but it proved in the end to be strong enough. It arose in the days when I was a green young hobble-de-hoy of nineteen, dragging along in my freshman year, and she was a bright little gipsy four years younger. At a juvenile tea-party at the Days' we were playing games, and one--I don't know what it was, except that it demanded some familiarity with historical characters and readiness in using one's knowledge. The little wit I had was soon hopelessly knocked out of me, while Katie, quick and alert, was equally ready at showing all she knew, and s.h.i.+elded herself by repartee when she knew nothing. I made some absurd blunder, perhaps more in my awkward way of putting things than in what I really meant, between the two celebrated Cromwells, giving the impression that I thought the great Oliver a Catholic. I might have made some confused explanation, but was silenced by Katie's ringing laugh, a peal of irresistible girlish gayety, such as worldly prudence is rarely strong enough to check at fifteen. Perhaps she was excited and could not help it, but I thought she laughed more than she need, and there was something scornful in the tone that jarred on me painfully. I could not be so foolish as to resent it, but I could not forget it, and often when she has looked most lovely, and the star of love has shone most propitious, some sharper cadence than usual in her voice, or a hint at harder lines under the soft curves of her face, or a contemptuous ring in her musical laugh, has withered the words on my lips, and the hour has pa.s.sed with them unspoken. It was, I dimly felt, only a question of time; the flood must some day rise high enough to sweep the frail barrier away.

Katie and Eleanor had but little in common on the surface, nor were there ever any deeper sympathies of thought and feeling between them.

Still, they were girls, living near together, and with all the others much farther off. It was impossible that there should not be some intercourse of business or pleasure, though never intimate and always irregular; and one pleasant September it came about that we spent a good many hours together, playing lawn tennis on my court. There was another young man hanging about; an admirer of Katie's, he might be called, though he was not very forward to try his chances, thinking, as I plainly saw, that they were not worth much. Herbert Riddell was not much cleverer than I was, and, though not poor, had no wealth to give him importance. He was a thoroughly good fellow, and felt no jealousy of me, and it was pleasant for him to loiter away the golden autumn days with beauty on the tennis court, even if both were another's property. We were well enough matched, for, though Herbert and Katie were very fair players, while Eleanor was a perfect stick, yet I played so much better than the others that I generally pulled her through. She really tried her best, but somehow the more she tried the more blunders she made, perhaps from nervousness, and one afternoon they were especially remarkable. We were hurrying to finish our match, as it was getting late and nearly time for "high tea" at the Days', to which we were all asked, though Eleanor, as usual, had declined, and Katie, as usual, had not pressed her. It was nothing to either Herbert or me, for we both found Mrs. Day a much more lively _pis aller_ in conversation than Eleanor.

Katie was serving, and sent one of her finest, swiftest b.a.l.l.s at Eleanor, who struck at it with all her force, and did really hit it, but unfortunately and mysteriously sent it straight up into the air. We all watched it breathlessly, as it came down--down--and fell on our side of the net. Katie, warm and excited, laughed loud and long. I thought that there was a little affection of superiority in her mirth, just like there was in the high, clear, scornful music that woke the echoes of long ago, and I in turn lost my self-possession, and returned my next ball with such nervous strength that it flew far beyond the lawn and over the clumps of laurels into the wood beyond. We had lost the set.

"Really, Mr. Greenway," cried Katie, "you must have tried to do that; or have you been taking private lessons of Eleanor?" She stopped, her fine ear perhaps detecting something strained and hard in her own voice. I see her still as she looked then, poised like Mercury on one slender foot, one arm thrown back and holding her racket behind her head, framing it in, the little dimples quivering round her mouth, ready to melt into smiles at a word, while from under her dark eyelashes she shot out a long, bright look, half saucy defiance, half pleading for pardon.

It was enough to madden any man who saw her, and it struck home to Riddell. Poor fellow! it was never aimed at him, and it fell short of its mark:

"My heart's cold ashes vainly would she stir, The light was quenched she looked so lovely in."

Eleanor, meanwhile, was bidding her usual good-by, nothing in her manner showing that she was at all offended. She need not be, for of course Katie could not seriously intend any slight to her, any more than to a stray tennis ball to which she might give a random hit. But I could not let a lady go home alone from my own ground in just this way, and I had a sort of fellow-feeling with her, which I wanted to show.

"I will see Miss Beecher home, and then come back," I said, and hastened after her, although I had seen, by the prompt manner in which she had walked off, that she did not intend, and very likely did not wish, I should. I was glad to leave the ground and get away from them. I kept saying to myself that after all Katie was not much to blame; girls would be thoughtless, and Katie was so pretty and so petted that she might well be a little spoiled; and then I asked myself what right I had to set myself up as a judge of her conduct? None at all; only I wished that women, who can so easily and lightly touch on the raw places of others, would use their power to heal and not to wound. I could picture to myself some girl with an eagerness to share the overflowing gifts of fortune with others, a respectful tenderness for those who had but little, a yearning sweetness of sympathy that should disarm even envy, and give the very inequalities of life their fitness and significance.

We men have rougher ways to hurt or heal; and though I tried desperately hard, I could not hit on anything pleasant or consolatory to say to Eleanor.

She had got pretty well ahead of me, and was out of sight already. Her way home was by a long roundabout walk through our place, and then by a short one along the public road. When I turned into the winding, shady path which led through the thick barrier of trees hiding the Beecher wall, she was loitering slowly along before me; and though she quickened her pace when she heard me behind her, as a hint that I need not follow, I soon caught up with her, and then I was sorry I had tried to, for I saw that she was crying most undisguisedly and unbecomingly.

"Miss Beecher--Eleanor," I stammered out, "you mustn't mind it--she didn't mean it--it was too bad--I was a little provoked myself--but don't feel so about it."

"Oh, it's not that," said Eleanor, stopping short, and steadying her trembling voice, so that it seemed as if she were practised in stifling her emotions. The very tears stopped rolling down her cheeks.

"It's--it's everything. You don't know what it is," she went on more rapidly; "you never can know--how should you--but if you were I, to see another girl ahead of you in everything--to have nothing, not one single thing, that you could feel any satisfaction in--and no matter how hard you tried, to have her do everything better without taking any trouble, and to know that if you worked night and day for people, you could not please them as well as she can without a moment's care or thought, just by being what she is--you would not like it. And the worst of it all is that I know I am mean and selfish and hateful to feel so about it, for it's not one bit Katie's fault."

"Oh, come!" I said; "don't look at it so seriously. You exaggerate matters."

"I should not mind it," said Eleanor, gravely, "if I did not feel so badly about it. Now, I know that's nonsense. I mean that if I could only keep from having wrong feelings about it myself, it would not matter much if she were ever so superior in every way."

"Are you not a little bit morbid? If you were really as selfish as you think, you would not be so much concerned about it. It seems to me that we all have our own peculiar place in this world, and that if we fill it properly, we must have our own peculiar advantages; no one else can do just what we can, any more than we could do what they could; we must just try to do well what we have to do."

"It is very well for you to talk in that way," said Eleanor, simply.

"I?"--a little bitterly. "I am a very idle fellow, who has made but little effort to better himself or others. But we won't talk of efforts, for I am sure your conscience must acquit you there. I suppose you were thinking more of natural gifts--of pleasing, which is after all only another way of helping. One pleases one, and one another, and it is as well, perhaps, to be loved by a few as liked by a great many. Don't doubt, my dear Miss Beecher, that any man who truly loves you will find you more charming even than Katie Day."

What there was in this harmless and well-meant speech to excite Eleanor's anger I could not imagine; but girls are queer creatures. She grew, if possible, redder than before, and her eyes fairly flashed. "No one--" she began, and stopped, unable to speak a word. I went on, as much for a sort of curious satisfaction I had in hearing my own words, as for any consolation they might be to her. "Beautiful as she is, she only pleases my eye; she does not touch my heart. I am not one particle in love with her, and sometimes I scarcely even like her."

"Stop!" cried Eleanor; "you must not say such things--I did very wrong to speak to you as I did. You mean to be kind, but you don't know how every word you say humiliates me. Surely, you can't think me so mean as to let it please me, and yet, perhaps, you know me better than I do myself. There is a wretched little bit of a feeling that I would not own if I could help it, that--that--" She was trembling like a leaf now, and so pale that I thought she was going to faint away. I did not know whether to feel more sorry for her or angry with myself for having made things worse instead of better by my awkwardness. There was only one way to get out of the sc.r.a.pe. I threw my arm around her shaking form, took her cold hand in mine, and said with what was genuine feeling at the time, "Dearest Eleanor!" Of course there was no going back after that.