At Last Part 1

At Last.

by Marion Harland.

CHAPTER I. -- DEWLESS ROSES.

Mrs. Rachel Sutton was a born match maker, and she had cultivated the gift by diligent practice. As the sight of a tendrilled vine suggests the need and fitness of a trellis, and a stray glove invariably brings to mind the thought of its absent fellow, so every disengaged spinster of marriageable age was an appeal--pathetic and sure--to the dear woman's helpful sympathy, and her whole soul went out in compa.s.sion over such "nice" and an appropriated bachelors as crossed her orbit, like blind and dizzy comets.

Her propensity, and her conscientious indulgence of the same, were proverbial among her acquaintances, but no one--not even prudish and fearsome maidens of altogether uncertain age, and prudent mammas, equally alive to expediency and decorum--had ever labelled her "Dangerous," while with young people she was a universal favorite.

Although, with an eye single to her hobby, she regarded a man as an uninteresting molecule of animated nature, unless circ.u.mstances warranted her in recognizing in him the possible lover of some waiting fair one, and it was notorious that she reprobated as worse than useless--positively demoralizing, in fact--such friendships between young persons of opposite s.e.xes as held out no earnest of prospective betrothal, she was confidante-general to half the girls in the county, and a standing advisory committee of one upon all points relative to their a.s.sociations with the beaux of the region. The latter, on their side, paid their court to the worthy and influential widow as punctiliously, if not so heartily, as did their gentle friends. Not that the task was disagreeable. At fifty years of age, Mrs. b.u.t.ton was plump and comely; her fair curls unfaded, and still full and glossy; her blue eyes capable of languishing into moist appreciation of a woful heart-history, or sparkling rapturously at the news of a triumphant wooing; her little fat hands were swift and graceful, and her complexion so infantine in its clear white and pink as to lead many to believe and some--I need not say of which gender--to practise clandestinely upon the story that she had bathed her face in warm milk, night and morning, for forty years. The more sagacious averred, however, that the secret of her continued youth lay in her kindly, unwithered heart, in her loving thoughtfulness for others' weal, and her avoidance, upon philosophical and religions grounds, of whatever approximated the discontented retrospection winch goes with the mult.i.tude by the name of self-examination.

Our bonnie widow had her foibles and vanities, but the first were amiable, the latter superficial and harmless, usually rather pleasant than objectionable. She was very proud, for instance, of her success in the profession she had taken up, and which she pursued con amore; very jealous for the reputation for connubial felicity of those she had aided to couple in the leash matrimonial, and more uncharitable toward malicious meddlers or thoughtless triflers with the course of true love; more implacable to match-breakers than to the most atrocious phases of schism, heresy, and sedition in church or state, against which she had, from her childhood, been taught to pray. The remotest allusion to a divorce case threw her into a cold perspiration, and apologies for such legal severance of the hallowed bond were commented upon as rank and noxious blasphemy, to which no Christian or virtuous woman should lend her ear for an instant. If she had ever entertained "opinions" hinting at the allegorical nature of the Mosaic account of the Fall, her theory would unquestionably have been that Satan's insidious whisper to the First Mother prated of the beauties of feminine individuality, and enlarged upon the feasibility of an elopement from Adam and a separate maintenance upon the knowledge-giving, forbidden fruit. Upon second marriages--supposing the otherwise indissoluble tie to have been cut by Death--she was a trifle less severe, but it was generally understood that she had grave doubts as to their propriety--unless in exceptional cases.

"When there is a family of motherless children, and the father is himself young, it seems hard to require him to live alone for the rest of his life," she would allow candidly. "Not that I pretend to say that a connection formed through prudential motives is a real marriage in the sight of Heaven. Only that there is no human law against it. And the odds are as eight to ten that an efficient hired housekeeper would render his home more comfortable, and his children happier than would a stepmother. As for a woman marrying twice"--her gentle tone and eyes growing sternly decisive--"it is difficult for one to tolerate the idea.

That is, if she really loved her first husband. If not, she may plead this as some excuse for making the venture--poor thing! But whether, even then, she has the moral right to lessen some good girl's chances of getting a husband by taking two for herself, has ever been and must remain a mooted question in my mind."

Her conduct in this respect was thoroughly consistent with her avowed principles. She was but thirty when her husband died, after living happily with her for ten years. Her only child had preceded him to the grave four years before, and the attractive relict of Frederic Sutton, comfortably jointured and without inc.u.mbrance of near relatives, would have become a toast with gay bachelors and enterprising widowers, but for the quiet propriety of her demeanor, and the steadiness with which she insisted--for the most part, tacitly--upon her right to be considered a married woman still.

"Once Frederic's wife--always his!" was the sole burden of her answer to a proposal of marriage received when she was forty-five, and the discomfited suitor filed it in his memory alongside of Caesar's hackneyed war dispatch.

She had laid off c.r.a.pe and bombazine at the close of the first l.u.s.trum of her widowhood as inconvenient and unwholesome wear, but never a.s.sumed colored apparel. On the morning on which our story opens, she took her seat at the breakfast-table in her nephew's house--of which she was matron and supervisor-in-chief--clad in a white cambric wrapper, belted with black; her collar fastened with a mourning-pin of Frederic's hair, and a lace cap, trimmed with black ribbon, set above her luxuriant tresses. She looked fresh and bright as the early September day, with her sunny face and in her daintily-neat attire, as she arranged cups and saucers for seven people upon the waiter before her, instructing the butler, at the same time, to ring the bell again for those she was to serve. She was very busy and happy at that date. The neighborhood was gay, after the open-hearted, open-handed style of hospitality that distinguished the brave old days of Virginia plantation-life. A merry troup of maidens and cavaliers visited by invitation one homestead after another, crowding bedrooms beyond the capacity of any chambers of equal size to be found in the land, excepting in a country house in the Old Dominion; surrounding bountiful tables with smiling visages and restless tongues; dancing, walking, driving, and singing away the long, warm days, that seemed all too short to the soberest and plainest of the company; which sped by like dream-hours to most of the number.

Winston Aylett, owner and tenant of the ancient mansion of Ridgeley--the great house of a neighborhood where small houses and men of narrow means were infrequent--had gone North about the first of June, upon a tour of indefinite length, but which was certainly to include Newport, the lakes, and Niagara, and was still absent. His aunt, Mrs. Sutton, and his only sister, Mabel, did the honors of his home in his stead, and, if the truth must be admitted, more acceptably to their guests than he had ever succeeded in doing. For a week past, the house had been tolerably well filled--ditto Mrs. Sutton's hands; ditto her great, heart. Had she not three love affairs, in different but encouraging stages of progression, under her roof and her patronage! And were not all three, to her apprehension, matches worthy of Heaven's making, and her co-operation?

A devout Episcopalian, she was yet an unquestioning believer in predestination and "special Providences"--and what but Providence had brought together the dear creatures now basking in the benignant beam of her smile, sailing smoothly toward the haven of Wedlock before the prospering breezes of Circ.u.mstance (of her manufacture)?

While putting sugar and cream into the cups intended for the happy pairs, she reviewed the situation rapidly in her mind, and sketched the day's manoeuvres.

First, there was the case of Tom Barksdale and Imogene Tabb--highly satisfactory and creditable to all the parties concerned in it, but not romantic. Tom, a st.u.r.dy young planter, who had studied law while at the University, but never practised it, being already provided for by his opulent father, had visited his relatives, the Tabbs, in August, and straightway fallen in love with the one single daughter of his second cousin--a pretty, amiable girl, who would inherit a neat fortune at her parent's death, and whose pedigree became identical with that of the Barksdales a couple of generations back, and was therefore unimpeachable. The friends on both sides were enchanted; the lovers fully persuaded that they were made for one another, an opinion cordially endorsed by Mrs. Sutton, and they could confer with no higher authority.

Next came Alfred Branch and Rosa Tazewell--incipient, but promising at this juncture, inasmuch as Rosa had lately smiled more encouragingly upon her timid wooer than she had deigned to do before they were domesticated at Ridgeley. Mrs. Sutton did not approve of unmaidenly forwardness. The woman who would unsought be won, would have fared ill in her esteem. Her lectures upon the beauties and advantages of a modest, yet alluring reserve, were cut up into familiar and much-prized quotations among her disciples, and were acted upon the more willingly for the prestige that surrounded her exploits as high priestess of Hymen. But Rosa had been too coy to Alfred's evident devotion--almost repellent at seasons. Had these rebuffs not alternated with attacks of remorse, during which the exceeding gentleness of her demeanor gradually pried the crushed hopes of her adorer out of the slough, and cleansed their drooping plumes of mud, the courtship would have fallen through, ere Mrs. Sutton could bring her skill to bear upon it. Guided, and yet soothed by her velvet rein, Rosa really seemed to become more steady.

She was a.s.suredly more thoughtful, and there was no better sign of Cupid's advance upon the outworks of a girl's heart than reverie. If her fits of musing were a shade too pensive, the experienced eye of the observer descried no cause for discouragement in this feature. Rosa was a spoiled, wayward child, freakish and mischievous, to whom liberty was too dear to be resigned without a sigh. By and by, she would wear her shackles as ornaments, like all other sensible and loving women.

Thus preaching to Alfred, when he confided to her the fluctuations of rapture and despair that were his lot in his intercourse with the sometimes radiant and inviting, sometimes forbidding sprite, whose wings he would fain bind with his embrace, and thus rea.s.suring herself, when perplexed by a flash of Rosa's native perverseness, Mrs. Sutton was sanguine that all would come right in the end. What was to be would be, and despite the rapids in their wooing, Alfred would find in Rosa a faithful, affectionate little wife, while she could never hope to secure a better, more indulgent, and, in most respects, more eligible, partner than the Ayletts' well-to-do, well-looking neighbor.

But the couple who occupied the central foreground of our match-maker's thoughts were her niece, Mabel Aylott, and her own departed husband's namesake, Frederic Chilton. She dilated to herself and to Mabel with especial gusto upon the "wonderful leading," the inward whisper that had prompted her to propose a trip to the Rockbridge Alum Springs early in July. Neither she nor Mabel was ailing in the slightest degree, but she imagined they would be the brighter for a glimpse of the mountains and the livelier scenes of that pleasant Spa--and whom should they meet there but the son of "dear Frederic's" old friend, Mr. Chilton, and of course they saw a great deal of him--and the rest followed as Providence meant it should.

"The rest" expressed laconically the essence of numberless walks by moonlight and starlight; innumerable dances in the great ball-room, and the sweeter, more interesting confabulations that made the young people better acquainted in four weeks than would six years of conventional calls and small-talk. They stayed the month out, although "Aunt Rachel"

had, upon their arrival, named a fortnight as the extreme limit of their sojourn. Frederic Chilton was their escort to Eastern Virginia, and remained a week at Ridgeley--perhaps to recover from the fatigue of the journey. So soon as he returned to Philadelphia, in which place he had lately opened a law-office, he wrote to Mabel, declaring his affection for her, and suing for reciprocation. She granted him a gracious reply, and sanctioned by fond, sympathetic Aunt Rachel, in the absence of Mabel's brother and guardian, the correspondence was kept up briskly until Frederic's second visit in September. Ungenerous gossips, envious of her talents and influence, had occasionally sneered at Mrs. Sutton's appropriation of the credit of other alliances--but this one was her handiwork beyond dispute--hers and Providence's. She never forgot the partnership. She had carried her head more erect, and there was a brighter sparkle in her blue orbs since the evening Mabel had come blushingly to her room, Fred's proposal in her hand--to ask counsel and congratulations. Everybody saw through the discreet veil with which she flattered herself she concealed her exultation when others than the affianced twain were by--and while n.o.body was so unkind as to expose the thinness of the pretence, she was given to understand in many and gratifying ways that her masterpiece was considered, in the Aylett circle, a suitable crown to the achievements that had preceded it. Mabel was popular and beloved, and her betrothed, in appearance and manner, in breeding and intelligence, justified Mrs. Sutton's pride in her niece's choice.

The old lady colored up, with the quick, vivid rose-tint of sudden and real pleasure that rarely outlives early girlhood, when the first respondent to the breakfast-bell proved to be her Frederic's G.o.d-son.

"You are always punctual! I wish you would teach the good habit to some other people," she said, after answering his cordial "good-morning."

"None of us deserve to be praised on that score, to-day," rejoined he, looking at his watch. "I did not awake until the dressing-bell rang. Our riding-party was out late last night. The extreme beauty of the evening beguiled us into going further than we intended, when we set out."

"Yes! you young folks are falling into shockingly irregular habits--take unprecedented liberties with me and with Time!" shaking her head.

"If Winston do not return soon, you will set my mild rule entirely at defiance."

Chilton laughed--but was serious the next instant.

"I expected confidently to meet him at this visit," he said, glancing at the door to guard against being overheard. "Should he not return to-day, ought I not, before leaving this to-morrow, to write to him, since he is legally his sister's guardian? It is, you and she tell me, a mere form, but one that should not be dispensed with any longer."

"That may be so. Winston is rigorous in requiring what is due to his position--is, in some respects, a fearful formalist. But he will hardly oppose your wishes and Mabel's. He has her real happiness at heart, I believe, although he is, at times, an over-strict and exacting guardian--perhaps to counterbalance my indulgent policy. He is unlike any other young man I know."

"His sister is very much attached to him."

"She loves him--I was about to say, preposterously. Her implicit belief in and obedience to him have increased his self-confidence into a dogmatic a.s.sertion of infallibility. But"--fearing she might create an unfortunate impression upon the listener's mind--"Winston has grounds for his good opinion of himself. His character is unblemished--his principles and aims are excellent. Only"--relapsing hopelessly into the confidential strain in which most of the conference had been carried--"between ourselves, my dear Frederic, I am never quite easy with these patterns to the rest of human-kind. I should even prefer a tiny vein of depravity to such very rectangular virtue."

"You are seldom ill at ease, if human perfection is all that renders you uncomfortable," responded Frederic. "There are not many in whose composition one cannot trace, not a tiny, but a broad vein of Adamic nature. What a delicious morning!" he added, sauntering to the window.

"And how sorry I am for those who did not get up in time to enjoy the freshness of its beauty!" cried a gay voice from the portico, and Mabel entered by the gla.s.s door behind him--her hands loaded with roses, herself so beaming that her lover refrained with difficulty from kissing the saucy mouth then and there.

He did take both her hands, under pretext of relieving her of the flowers, and Aunt Rachel judiciously turned her back upon them, and began a diligent search in the beaufet for a vase.

"Do you expect us to believe that you have been more industrious than we? As if we did not know that you bribed the gardener to have a bouquet cut and laid ready for you at the back-door," Frederic charged upon the matutinal Flora. "Else, where are other evidences of your stroll, in dew-sprinkled draperies and wet feet? Confess that you ran down stairs just two minutes ago! Now that I come to think of it, I am positive that I heard you, while Mrs. Sutton was lamenting your drowsy proclivities after sunrise."

"I have been sitting in the summer-house for an hour--reading!"

protested Mabel, wondrously resigned to the detention, after a single, and not violent attempt at release. "If you had opened your shutters you must have seen me. But I knew I was secure from observation on that side of the house, at least until eight o'clock, about which time the glories of the new day usually penetrate very tightly-closed lids. As to dew--there isn't a drop upon gra.s.s or blossom. And, by the same token, we shall have a storm within twenty-four hours."

"Is that true? That is a meteorological presage I never heard of until now."

"There is a moral in it, which I leave you to study out for yourself, while I arrange the roses I--and not the gardener--gathered."

In a whisper, she subjoined--"Let me go! Some one is coming!" and in a second more was at the sideboard, hurrying the flowers into the antique china bowl, destined to grace the centre of the breakfast table.

"Good-morning, Miss Rosa. You are just in season to enjoy the society of your sister," Frederic said, lightly, pointing to the billows of mingled white and red, tossing under Mabel's fingers.

The new-comer approached the sideboard, leaned languidly upon her elbow, and picked up a half-blown bud at random from the pile.

"They are scentless!" she complained.

"Because dewless!" replied Mabel, with profound gravity. "It is the tearful heart that gives out the sweetest fragrance."

"I have more faith in sunshine," interrupted Rosa, a tinge of contempt in her smile and accent. "Or--to drop metaphors, at which I always bungle--it is my belief that it is easy for happy people to be good.

All this talk about the sweetness of crushed blossoms, throwing their fragrance from the wounded part, and the riven sandal-tree, and the blessed uses of adversity, is outrageous balderdash, according to my doctrine. A buried thing is but one degree better than a dead one. What it is the fashion of poets and sentimentalists to call perfume, is the odor of incipient decay."

"You are ill.u.s.trating your position by means of my poor oriental pearl,"

remonstrated Mabel, playfully, wresting the hand that was beating the life and whiteness out of the floweret upon the marble top of the beaufet. "Take this hardy geant de batailles, instead. My bouquet must have a cl.u.s.ter of pearls for a heart."

"What a fierce crimson!" Frederic remarked upon the widely-opened rose Miss Tazewell received in place of the delicate bud. "That must be the 'hue angry, yet brave,' which, Mr. George Herbert a.s.serts, 'bids the rash gazer wipe his eye.'"

"More poetical nonsense!" said Rosa, deliberately tearing the bold "geant" to pieces down to the bare stem, "unless he meant to be comic, and intimate that the gazer was so rash as to come too near the bush, and ran a thorn into the pupil."

No one answered, except by the indulgent smile that usually greeted her sallies, however absurd, among those accustomed to the spoiled child's vagaries.

Mabel was making some leisurely additions to her bouquet in the shape of ribbon gra.s.s and pendent ivy sprays, coaxing these with persuasive touches to trail over the edge and entwine the pedestal of the salver on which her bowl was elevated; her head set slightly on one side, her lips apart in a smile of enjoyment in her work and in herself. It was a picture the lover studied fondly--one that hung forever thereafter in his gallery of mental portraits. Beyond a pair of fine gray eyes, the pliant grace of her figure and the buoyant carriage of youth, health, and a glad heart, Mabel's pretensions to beauty were comparatively few, said the world. Frederic Chilton had, nevertheless, fallen in love with her at sight, and considered her, now, the handsomest woman of his acquaintance. Her dress was a simple lawn--a sheer white fabric, with bunches of purple gra.s.s bound up with yellow wheat, scattered over it; her hair was l.u.s.trous and abundant, and her face, besides being happy, was frank and intelligent, with wonderful mobility of expression. In temperament and sentiment; in capacity for, and in demonstration of affection, she suited Frederic to the finest fibre of his mind and heart. He, for one, did not carp at Aunt Rachel's declaration that they were intended to spend time and eternity together.

Still, Mabel Aylett was not a belle, and Rosa Tazewell was. Callow collegians and enterprising young merchants from the city; sunbrowned owners of spreading acres and hosts of laborers; students and pract.i.tioners of law and medicine, and an occasional theologue, had broken their hearts for perhaps a month at a time, for love of her, since she was a school-girl in short dresses. Yet there had been a date very far back in the acquaintanceship of each of these with the charmer, when he had marvelled at the infatuation which had blinded her previous adorers. She was "a neat little thing," with her round waist, her tiny hands and feet and roguish eye--but there was nothing else remarkable about her features, and in coloring, the picture was too dark for his taste. Why, she might be mistaken for a creole! And each critic held fast to his expressed opinion until the roguish eyes met his directly and with meaning, and he found himself diving into the bright, shimmering wells, and drowning--still ecstatically--before he reached the bottom whence streamed the light of pa.s.sionate feeling, striking upward through the surface. What her glances did not effect was done by her dazzling smile and musical voice.