Part 5

On the whole, he was a worthy and even admirable specimen of the genus young man. No doubt he was conceited; he often offended people by his bumptiousness of opinion and hauteur of manner; he rather depressed the human race by the severity with which he classed this one and that one as “no gentleman,” because of slight defects in etiquette; he considerably amused older and wearier minds by the confidence with which he settled vexed questions of several thousand years’ standing; but with all these faults, he was a better and wiser and more agreeable fellow than one often meets at his age; he was a youth whom man could respect and woman adore. To noble souls it must be agreeable, I think, to see him at the present moment, anxious to know precisely what sorrows had clouded the life of his betrothed in the old house before him, and yet refraining from questioning her on the alluring subject, “because he was a gentleman.”

The house itself kept its secret admirably. It had not a signature of character about it; it was as non-committal as an available candidate for the Presidency; it exhibited the plain, unornamental, unpoetic reserve of a Yankee Puritan. Whether it were a stage for comedy or tragedy, whether it were a palace for happy souls or a prison for afflicted ones, it gave not even a darkling hint.

A sufficiently spacious edifice, but low of stature and with a long slope of back roof, it reminded one of a stocky and round-shouldered old farmer, like those who daily trudged by it to and from the market of Hampstead, hawing and geeing their fat cattle with lean, hard voices. A front door, sheltered by a small portico, opened into a hall which led straight through the building, with a parlor and bedroom on one side, and a dining-room and kitchen on the other. In the rear was a low wing serving as wash-house, lumber-room, and wood-shed. The white clapboards and green blinds were neither freshly painted nor rusty, but just sedately weather-worn. The grounds, the long woodpiles, the barn and its adjuncts, were all in that state of decent slovenliness which prevails amid the more rustic farming population of New England. On the whole, the place looked like the abode of one who had made a fair fortune by half a century or more of laborious and economical though not enlightened agriculture.

“I must leave you now,” said Foster, when the two reached the gate of the “front-yard”; “I must get back to my work in Hampstead.”

“And you won’t come in for a minute?” pleaded Bessie.

“You know that I would be glad to come in and stay in for ever and ever. It seems now as if life were made for nothing but talking to you. But my fellow-men no doubt think differently. There are such things as lectures, and I must prepare a few of them. I really have pressing work to do.”

What he furthermore had in his mind was, “I am bound as a gentleman to do it”; but he refrained from saying that: he was conscious that he sometimes said it too much; little by little he was learning that he was bumptious, and that he ought not to be.

“And you will come to-morrow?” still urged Bessie, grasping at the next best thing to to-day.

“Yes, I shall walk out. This driving every day won’t answer, on a professor’s salary,” he added, swelling his chest over this grand confession of poverty. “Besides, I need the exercise.”

“How good of you to walk so far merely to see me!” exclaimed the humble little beauty.

Until he came again she brooded over the joys of being his betrothed, and over the future, the far greater joy of being his wife. Was not this high hope in love, this confidence in the promises of marriage, out of place in Bessie? She has daily before her, in the mutual sayings and doings of her grandfather and his spouse, a woful instance of the jarring way in which the chariot-wheels of wedlock may run. Squire Tom Lauson does not get on angelically with his second wife. It is reported that she finds existence with him the greatest burden that she has ever yet borne, and that she testifies to her disgust with it in a fashion which is at times startlingly dramatic. If we arrive at the Lauson house on the day following the dialogue which has been reported, we shall witness one of her most effective exhibitions.

It is raining violently; an old-fashioned blue-light Puritan thunder-storm is raging over the Barham hills; the blinding flashes are instantaneously followed by the deafening peals; the air is full of sublime terror and danger. But to Mrs. Squire Lauson the tempest is so far from horrible that it is even welcome, friendly, and alluring, compared with her daily showers of conjugal misery. She has just finished one of those frequent contests with her husband, which her sickly petulance perpetually forces her to seek, and which nevertheless drive her frantic. In her wild, yet weak rage and misery, death seems a desirable refuge. Out of the open front door she rushes, out into the driving rain and blinding lightning, lifts her hands passionately toward Heaven, and prays for a flash to strike her dead.

After twice shrieking this horrible supplication, she dropped her arms with a gesture of sullen despair, and stalked slowly, reeking wet, into the house. In the hall, looking out upon this scene of demoniacal possession, sat Bessie Lauson and her maiden aunt, Miss Mercy Lauson, while behind them, coming from an inner room, appeared the burly figure of the old Squire. As Mrs. Lauson passed the two women, they drew a little aside with a sort of shrinking which arose partly from a desire to avoid her dripping garments, and partly from that awe with which most of us regard ungovernable passion. The Squire, on the contrary, met his wife with a sarcastic twinkle of his grim gray eyes, and a scoff which had the humor discoverable in the contrast between total indifference and furious emotion.

“Closed your camp-meeting early, Mrs. Lauson,” said the old man; “can’t expect a streak of lightning for such a short service.”

A tormentor who wears a smile inflicts a double agony. Mrs. Lauson wrung her hands, and broke out in a cry of rage and anguish: “O Lord, let it strike me! O Lord, let it strike me!”

Squire Lauson took a chair, crossed his thick, muscular legs, glanced at his wife, glanced at the levin-seamed sky, and remarked with a chuckle, “I’m waiting to see this thing out.”

“Father, I say it’s perfectly awful,” remonstrated Miss Mercy Lauson. “Mother, ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”

Miss Mercy was an old maid of the grave, sad, sickly New England type. She pronounced her reproof in a high, thin, passionless monotone, without a gesture or a flash of expression, without glancing at the persons whom she addressed, looking straight before her at the wall. She seemed to speak without emotion, and merely from a stony sense of duty. It was as if a message had been delivered by the mouth of an automaton.

Both the Squire and his wife made some response, but a prolonged crash of thunder drowned the feeble blasphemy of their voices, and the moving of their lips was like a mockery of life, as if the lips of corpses had been stirred by galvanism. Then, as if impatient of hearing both man and God, Mrs. Lauson clasped her hands over her ears, and fled away to some inner room of the shaking old house, seeking perhaps the little pity that there is for the wretched in solitude. The Squire remained seated, his gray and horny fingers drumming on the arms of the chair, and his faded lips murmuring some inaudible conversation.

For the wretchedness of Mrs. Lauson there was partial cause in the disposition and ways of her husband. Very odd was the old Squire; violently combative could he be in case of provocation; and to those who resisted what he called his rightful authority he was a tyrant.

Having lost the wife whom he had ruled for so many years, and having enjoyed the serene but lonely empire of widowhood for eighteen months, he felt the need of some one for some purpose,—perhaps to govern. Once resolved on a fresh spouse, he set about searching for one in a clear-headed and business-like manner, as if it had been a question of getting a family horse.

The woman whom he finally received into his flinty bosom was a maiden of forty-five, who had known in her youth the uneasy joys of many flirtations, and who had marched through various successes (the triumphs of a small university town) to sit down at last in a life-long disappointment. Regretting her past, dissatisfied with every present, demanding improbabilities of the future, eager still to be flattered and worshipped and obeyed, she was wofully unfitted for marriage with an old man of plain habits and retired life, who was quite as egoistic as herself and far more combative and domineering. It was soon a horrible thing to remember the young lovers who had gone long ago, but who, it seemed to her, still adored her, and to compare them with this unsympathizing master, who gave her no courtship nor tender reverence, and who spoke but to demand submission.

“In a general way,” says a devout old lady of my acquaintance, “Divine Providence blesses second marriages.”

With no experience of my own in this line, and with not a large observation of the experience of others, I am nevertheless inclined to admit that my friend has the right of it. Conceding the fact that second marriages are usually happy, one naturally asks, Why is it? Is it because a man knows better how to select a second wife? or because he knows better how to treat her? Well disposed toward both these suppositions, I attach the most importance to the latter.

No doubt Benedict chooses more thoughtfully when he chooses a second time; no doubt he is governed more by judgment than in his first courtship, and less by blind impulse; no doubt he has learned some love-making wisdom from experience. A woman who will be patient with him, a woman who will care well for his household affairs and for his children, a woman who will run steadily rather than showily in the domestic harness,—that is what he usually wants when he goes sparking at forty or fifty.

But this is not all and not even the half of the explanation. He has acquired a knowledge of what woman is, and a knowledge of what may fairly be required of her. He has learned to put himself in her place; to grant her the sympathy which her sensitive heart needs; to estimate the sufferings which arise from her variable health; in short, he has learned to be thoughtful and patient and merciful. Moreover, he is apt to select some one who, like himself, has learned command of temper and moderation of expectation from the lessons of life. As he knows that a glorified wife is impossible here below, so she makes no strenuous demand for an angel husband.

But Squire Thomas Lauson had married an old maid who had not yet given up the struggle to be a girl, and who, in consequence of a long and silly bellehood, could not put up with any form of existence which was not a continual courtship. Furthermore, he himself was not a persimmon; he had not gathered sweetness from the years which frosted his brow. An interestingly obdurate block of the Puritan granite of New England, he was almost as self-opinionated, domineering, pugnacious, and sarcastic as he had been at fifteen. He still had overmuch of the unripe spirit which plagues little boys, scoffs at girls, stones frogs, drowns kittens, and mutters domestic defiances. If Mrs. Lauson was skittish and fractious, he was her full match as a wife-breaker.

In short, the Squire had not chosen wisely; he was not fitted to win a woman’s heart by sympathy and justice; and thus Providence had not blessed his second marriage.

We must return now to Miss Mercy Lauson and her niece Bessie. They are alone once more, for Squire Lauson has finished his sarcastic mutterings, and has stumped away to some other dungeon of the unhappy old house.

“You _see_, Bessie!” said Miss Mercy, after a pinching of her thin lips which was like the biting of forceps,—“you _see_ how married people can live with each other. Bickerings an’ strife! bickerings an’ strife! But for all that you mean to marry Henry Foster.”

We must warn the reader not to expect vastness of thought or eloquence of speech from Miss Mercy. Her narrow-shouldered, hollow-chested soul could not grasp ideas of much moment, nor handle such as she was able to grasp with any vigor or grace.

“I should like to know,” returned Bessie with spirit, “if I am not likely to have my share of bickerings and strife, if I stay here and don’t get married.”

“That depends upon how far you control your temper, Elizabeth.”

“And so it does in marriage, I suppose.”

Miss Mercy found herself involved in an argument, when she had simply intended to play the part of a preacher in his pulpit, warning and reproving without being answered. She accepted the challenge in a tone of iced pugnacity, which indicated in part a certain imperfect habit of self-control, and in part the unrestrainable peevishness of a chronic invalid.

“I don’t say folks will necessarily be unhappy in merridge,” she went on. “Merridge is a Divine ord’nance, an’ I’m obleeged to respect it as such. I do, I suppose, respect it more ’n some who’ve entered into it. But merridge, to obtain the Divine blessing, must not be a yoking with unbelievers. There’s the trouble with father’s wife; she ain’t a professor. There, too, ’s the trouble with Henry Foster; he’s not one of those who’ve chosen the better part. I want you to think it all over in soberness of sperrit, Elizabeth.”

“It is the only thing you know against him,” replied the girl, flushing with the anger of outraged affection.

“No, it ain’t. He’s brung home strange ways from abroad. He smokes an’ drinks beer an’ plays cards; an’ his form seldom darkens the threshold of the sanctuary. Elizabeth, I must be plain with you on this vital subject. I’m going to be as plain with you as your own conscience ought to be. I see it’s no use talking to you ’bout duty an’ the life to come. I must—there’s no sort of doubt about it—I _must_ bring the things of this world to bear on you. You know I’ve made my will: I’ve left every cent of my property to you,—twenty thousand dollars! Well, if you enter into merridge with that young man, I shall alter it. I ain’t going to have my money,—the money that my poor God-fearing aunt left me,—I ain’t going to have it fooled away on card-players an’ scorners. Now there it is, Elizabeth. There’s what my duty tells me to do, an’ what I shall do. Ponder it well an’ take your choice.”

“I don’t care,” burst forth Bessie, springing to her feet. “I shall tell _him_, and if it makes no difference to _him_, it will make none to _me_.”

Here a creak in the floor caught her ear, and turning quickly she discovered Henry Foster. Entering the house by a side door, and coming through a short lateral passage to the front hall, he had reached it in time to hear the close of the conversation and catch its entire drift. You could see in his face that he had heard thus much, for healthy, generous, kindly, and cheerful as the face usually was, it wore now a confused and pained expression.

“I beg pardon for disturbing you,” he said. “I was pelted into the house to get out of the shower, and I took the shortest cut.”

Bessie’s Oriental visage flushed to a splendid crimson, and a whiter ashiness stole into the sallow cheek of Aunt Mercy. The girl, quick and adroit as most women are in leaping out of embarrassments, rushed into a strain of light conversation. How wet Professor Foster was, and wouldn’t he go and dry himself? What a storm it had been, and what wonderful, dreadful thunder and lightning; and how glad she was that he had come, for it seemed as if he were some protection.

“There’s only One who can protect us,” murmured Aunt Mercy, “either in such seasons or any others.”

“His natural laws are our proper recourse,” respectfully replied Foster, who was religious too, in his scientific fashion.

Bessie cringed with alarm; here was an insinuated attack on her aunt’s favorite dogma of special providences; the subject must be pitched overboard at once.

“What is the news in Hampstead?” she asked. “Has the town gone to sleep, as Barham has? You ought to wake us up with something amusing.”

“Jennie Brown is engaged,” said Foster. “Isn’t that satisfactory?”

“O dear! how many times does that make?” laughed Bessie. “Is it a student again?”

“Yes, it is a student.”

“You ought to make it a college offence for students to engage themselves,” continued Bessie. “You know that they can hardly ever marry, and generally break the girls’ hearts.”

“Have they broken Jennie Brown’s? She doesn’t believe it, nor her present young man either. I’ve no doubt he thinks her as good as new.”

“I dare say. But such things hurt girls in general, and you professors ought to see to it, and I want to know why you don’t. But is that all the news? That’s such a small matter! such an old sort of thing! If I had come from Hampstead, I would have brought more than that.”

So Bessie rattled on, partly because she loved to talk to this admirable Professor, but mainly to put off the crisis which she saw was coming.

But it was vain to hope for clemency, or even for much delay, from Aunt Mercy. Grim, unhappy, peevish as many invalids are, and impelled by a remorseless conscience, she was not to be diverted from finishing with Foster the horrid bone which she had commenced to pick with Bessie. You could see in her face what kind of thoughts and purposes were in her heart. She was used to quarrelling; or, to speak more strictly, she was used to entertaining hard feelings towards others; but she had never learned to express her bitter sentiments frankly. Unable to destroy them, she had felt herself bound in general not to utter them, and this non-utterance had grown to be one of her despotic and distressing “duties.” Nothing could break through her shyness, her reserve, her habit of silence, but an emotion which amounted to passion; and such an emotion she was not only unable to conceal, but she was also unable to exhibit it either nobly or gracefully: it shone all through her, and it made her seem spiteful.

As she was about to speak, however, a glance at Bessie’s anxious face checked her. After her painful, severe fashion, she really loved the girl, and she did not want to load her with any more sorrow than was strictly necessary. Moreover, the surely worthy thought occurred to her that Heaven might favor one last effort to convert this wrong-minded young man into one who could be safely intrusted with the welfare of her niece and the management of her money. Hailing the suggestion, in accordance with her usual exaltation of faith, as an indication from the sublimest of all authority, she entered upon her task with such power as nature had given her and such sweetness as a shattered nervous system had left her.

“Mr. Foster, there’s one thing I greatly desire to see,” she began in a hurried, tremulous tone. “I want you to come out from among the indifferent, an’ join yourself to _us_. Why don’t you do it? Why don’t you become a professor?”

Foster was even more surprised and dismayed than most men are when thus addressed. Here was an appeal such as all of us must listen to with respect, not only because it represents the opinions of a vast and justly revered portion of civilized humanity, but because it concerns the highest mysteries and possibilities of which humanity is cognizant. As one who valued himself on being both a philosopher and a gentleman, he would have felt bound to treat any one courteously who thus approached him. But there was more; this appeal evidently alluded to his intentions of marriage; it was connected with the threat of disinheritance which he had overheard on entering the house. If he would promise to “join the church,” if he would even only appear to take the step into favorable consideration, he could remove the objections of this earnest woman to his betrothal, and secure her property to his future wife. But Foster could not do what policy demanded; he had his “honest doubts,” and he could not remove them by an exercise of will; moreover, he was too self-respectful and honorable to be a hypocrite. After pondering Aunt Mercy’s question for a moment, he answered with a dignity of soul which was not appreciated,—

“I should have no objection to what you propose, if it would not be misunderstood. If it would only mean that I believe in God, and that I worship his power and goodness, I would oblige you. But it would be received as meaning more,—as meaning that I accept doctrines which I am still examining,—as meaning that I take upon myself obligations which I do not yet hold binding.”

“Don’t you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?” demanded Miss Mercy, striking home with telling directness.

“I believe in a Deity who views his whole universe with equal love. I believe in a Deity greater than I always hear preached.”

Miss Mercy was puzzled; for while this confession of faith did not quite tally with what she was accustomed to receive from pulpits, there was about it a largeness of religious perception which slightly excited her awe. Nevertheless, it showed a dangerous vagueness, and she decided to demand something more explicit.

“What are your opinions on the inspiration of the Scriptures?” she asked.

He had been reading Colenso’s work on Genesis; and, so far as he could judge the Bishop’s premises, he agreed with his conclusions. At the same time he was aware that such an exegesis would seem simple heresy to Miss Mercy, and that whoever held it would be condemned by her as a heathen and an infidel. After a moment of hesitation, he responded bravely and honestly, though with a placating smile.

“Miss Lauson, there are some subjects, indeed there are many subjects, on which I have no fixed opinions. I used to have opinions on almost everything; but I found them very troublesome, I had to change them so often! I have decided not to declare any more positive opinions, but only to entertain suppositions to the effect that this or that may be the case; meantime holding myself ready to change my hypotheses on further evidence.”

Although he seemed to her guilty of shuffling away from her question, yet she, in the main, comprehended his reply distinctly enough. He did not believe in plenary inspiration; that was clear, and so also was her duty clear; she must not let him have her niece nor her money.

Now there was a something in her face like the forming of columns for an assault, or rather like the irrational, ungovernable gathering of clouds for a storm. Her staid, melancholy soul—a soul which usually lay in chains and solitary—climbed writhing to her lips and eyes, and made angry gestures before it spoke. Bessie stared at her in alarm; she tried, in a spirit of youthful energy, to look her down; but the struggle of prevention was useless; the hostile words came.

“Mr. Foster, I can’t willingly give my niece to such an one as you,” she said in a tremulous but desperate monotone. “I s’pose, though, it’s no use forbidding you to go with her. I s’pose you wouldn’t mind that. But I expect you _will_ care for one thing,—for her good. My will is made now in her favor. But if she marries you I shall change it. I sha’n’t leave her a cent.”

Here her sickly strength broke down; such plain utterance of feeling and purpose was too much for her nerves; she burst into honest, bitter tears, and, rushing to her room, locked herself up; no doubt, too, she prayed there long, and read solemnly in the Scriptures.