Boston Neighbours In Town and Out Part 15

"That might have been spared me. I suppose you think I deserve it. Very well, I do, and you need not stay to argue the matter. Go!"

"Go! Why I should be a fool to go now, and you would be--well, we will call it mistaken--to let me. After we have got as far as we have, it would be absurd to suppose we can go back again. We know each other now better than nine tenths of the couples who have been married a year. I don't ask you to say you love me now; I am very sure you can, and I know I can love you--infinitely----"

"Oh, but--but you said you would not take his place--Mr. Ponsonby's. Can you let everyone think you capable of such an act of meanness? And if you could not respect me as your wife, how can you expect others to? Can we appear to act in a way to deserve contempt without despising each other?"

"There will be a good deal that is unpleasant about it, no doubt; but everyone's life has some unpleasantness. It would be worse to let a dream, even a dream of honor, come between us and our future. You made a mistake and underestimated its consequences, but it would be foolish to lose the substance of happiness because we have lost the shadow. We will live it down together and be glad it is no worse."

"But I have been so wrong, so very wrong--I have too many faults ever to make anyone happy."

"Of course you have faults, but I know the worst of them and can put up with them. I have plenty of my own which you may be finding out by this time. I am very domineering--you will have to promise to obey me, and I shall keep you to it; and then I can, under provocation, be furiously jealous."

"You are not jealous of Jack Allston?" she whispered.

"Jealous of old Jack? Oh, no! I shall keep my jealousy for poor Mr.

Ponsonby."

Society had been so often agitated by Lily Carey's affairs that it took with comparative coolness the tidings that she was to be married to Arend Van Voorst in six weeks. Miss Morgan said she supposed Lily was tired of "engagements," and wanted to be married this time. Her niece Emmeline shed tears over "poor Mr. Ponsonby," and refused to act as bridesmaid at his rival's nuptials; and in spite of her aunt's scoldings and Lily's entreaties, and all the temptations of the bridesmaids' pearl "lily" brooches and nosegays of Easter lilies, arranged a visit to her cousins in Philadelphia to avoid being present. Miss Thorne had no such scruples, and it is to her the world owes a lively account of the wedding; how it was fixed at so early a date lest "poor Mr. Ponsonby"

should hurry over to forbid the banns, and how terribly nervous Lily seemed lest he might, in spite of the absolute impossibility, and though Ponsonby, true gentleman to the last, never troubled her then or after.

"Poor Mr. Van Voorst, I should say!" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Allston. "I am sure he is the one to be pitied. But do tell me all the presents that have come in, for Jack says that I must give them something handsome after such a present as he gave me when we were married."

Mrs. Van Voorst received the tidings of her son's approaching marriage rather doubtfully. "Yes--the Careys were a very nice family; she knew Mrs. Carey was an Arlington, and her mother a Berkeley, and his mother--but--Miss Carey was very handsome, she had heard--with the Berkeley style of beauty and the Arlington manner, but--but--she did not mind their being Unitarians, for many of the very best people were, in Boston, but--but--but--indeed, my dear Arend, I have heard a good deal about her that I do not altogether like. I hope it may not be true--about her keeping Jack Allston hanging on for years, as _pis-aller_ to that young Englishman she was engaged to all the while--and finally throwing him over--and now she has thrown over this Mr. Ponsonby too!"

"Will you do just one thing for me, dear mother," asked her son; "will you forget all you have _heard_ about Lily, and judge her by what you _see_?"

Mrs. Van Voorst had never refused Arend anything in his life, and could not now. By what magic Lily, in their very first interview, won over the good lady is not known, but afterwards no mother-in-law's heart could have withstood the splendid son and heir with which she enriched the Van Voorst line. The young Van Voorsts were allowed by all their friends to be much happier than they deserved to be. Long after the gossip over their marriage had ceased, and it was an old story even to them, Arend was still in love with his wife. Lily was interesting; she had that quality or combination of qualities, impossible to a.n.a.lyse, which wins love where beauty fails, and keeps it when goodness tires. Her own happiness was more simple in its elements. She was better off than most women, and knew it--the last, the crowning gift, so often lacking to the fortunate of earth. She thought her husband much too good for her, though she never told him so. Nay, sometimes when she was a little fretted by his exacting disposition, for Arend was a strict martinet in all social and household matters and, as he had said, would be minded, she would sometimes more or less jestingly tell him that perhaps after all she had made a mistake in not keeping faith with "poor Mr.

Ponsonby."

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[Ill.u.s.tration]

MODERN VENGEANCE

"Well, Lucy, I must say I never saw anything go off more delightfully!"

"It would hardly fail to, with such interesting people," said Mrs. Henry Wilson.

"Why, every one said they thought it would be most difficult to manage; a sort of half-public thing, you know, to entertain those delegates or whatever they call them; they said it was well you had it, for no one else could possibly have made it go so well."

"I have no doubt most of them could, if they had all the help I had--from you, especially! I only wish I could have made it a dinner, instead of a lunch; but Henry is so very busy, just now, and I dared not attempt a dinner without him."

"Oh, my dear!" said her mother-in-law, "a doctor's time is always so occupied; they all know that. And dear Henry, of course, is more occupied than most."

"Perhaps it is as well," said the younger lady, "that they could come by daylight, as it is so far out of town; Medford is pretty, even in winter."

"Oh, yes! so they all said. Lady Bayswater thinks it is the prettiest suburb of Boston she has yet seen; and she admired the house, too, and you, and everything. 'Mrs. Wilson,' she said to me, 'your charming daughter-in-law is the prettiest American woman I have seen yet.'" And Mrs. Wilson, senior, a little elderly woman, to whom even her rich mourning dress could not impart dignity, jerked her heavy black Astrachan cape upon her shoulders, and tied its wide ribbons in a fluttering, one-sided way.

"She is very kind."

"And they all said so many things--I can't remember them."

"I am glad if they were pleased," said Mrs. Henry Wilson, rousing herself; "to tell the truth, I have not been able to think much of the lunch, or how it went off."

"Why, dear Henry is well, isn't he?"

"Yes, as well as usual, but a good deal troubled about----"

"Oh, the poor little Talbot boy! how is he?"

"I do not know. Henry, of course, gives no opinion; but I am afraid it is a very serious case. Membranous croup always is alarming, you know."

"Yes, indeed! sad--very sad; and their only boy, too, now. To be sure, if any one can save him, dear Henry can; but then, what with losing the other, and so much sickness as they have had, and Mabel expecting again, I really don't see how they are to get along," said Mrs. Wilson, fussing with her pocket handkerchief.

"It is very hard," a.s.sented her daughter-in-law, with a sigh.

"I do pity poor Eugene. What can a man do? I saw all those children paddling in the wet snow only last week; very likely that brought it on.

If I had let mine do so when they were little, I should have expected them to have croup, and diphtheria, and everything else. I would not mention it to any one but you, but I do think Mabel has always been very careless of her children."

"Poor Mabel!" said Mrs. Henry Wilson, with a look of angelic compa.s.sion.

"Remember how many cares and troubles she has had, and all her own ill-health. We all make mistakes sometimes in the care of our children, with the very best intentions. I let Harry play out in that very snow. I feared then that you might not approve; but you were not here, and he was so eager!"

"Oh, but, my dear, you always look after Harry so well! Those Talbot children had no rubbers on; and then, Harry is so much stronger than his father was. I do think your management most successful. I only wish poor Eugene had a wife like you." And as her hearer was silent: "I must go. Darling Harry is still at gymnasium, isn't he? and I suppose it is no use waiting for dear Henry, now. My love to them both; and do come round when you can, dear, won't you?" And after a little more fuss in looking for her m.u.f.f and letting down her veil, and a prolonged series of embraces of her daughter-in-law, she departed.

Young Mrs. Wilson, left alone, sat down in front of a glowing fire to review her day; but earlier memories appealed so much more powerfully, that in another moment she was reviewing her whole past life--an indulgence she rarely allowed herself.

If the poet in the country churchyard was struck with the thought of greatness that had perished unknown for lack of opportunity, how doubly he might have pointed his moral with renown missed by being of the wrong s.e.x. In clear perception of her ends, and resistless pursuit of them, Lucy Morton had not been inferior in her sphere to Napoleon in his; and if, after all, she was not so clever as she thought herself, why, neither was he. To begin with, she was born in a _cul-de-sac_ ending at a cow pasture. But what is that to genius? "This lane," she thought, "shall never hem me in"; and from earliest childhood she struggled to grow out of it, like a creeper out of a hole, catching at every aid.

She was early left an orphan, and lived with her grandfather, a well-to-do retired grocer, and her grandmother, and a maiden aunt. There was one other house in the lane, and in it lived a great-aunt, widow of the grocer's brother and partner, and a maiden first cousin once removed. They were a contented family, and liked the seclusion of their place of abode, which was clean and quiet, and where the old gentleman could prune his trees, and p.r.i.c.k out his lettuces un.o.bserved. He read the daily paper, and took a nap after his early dinner. The women made their own clothes, and dusted their parlours, and washed their dishes, and as the _cul-de-sac_ was loathed of servants, they often had the opportunity of doing all their own work, which they found a pleasant excitement, and in their secret souls preferred. They belonged to the Unitarian church, which marked them as slightly superior to the reigning grocer, who went to the "Orthodox meeting," but did not give them the social intercourse they would have found in churches of inferior pretensions. The elite of Medford, in those early days, was chiefly Unitarian, and it respected the Mortons, who gave generously of their time and money whenever they were asked. Its men spoke highly of "old Morton," and were civil to him at town and parish meetings; and its women would bow pleasantly to his female relatives after service and speak to them at sewing circles; and would inquire after the rest of the family when they could remember who they were. More, the Mortons did not ask or wish. They knew enough people on whom to make formal calls, gave or went to about six tea-parties a year, and exchanged visits with cousins who lived in Braintree.

Lucy was sent to the public school, and taught sewing and housework at home. She proved an apt pupil at both, and showed no discontent with her daily routine. She was early allowed to sit up to tea, even when company came; and had she asked to bring home any little girl in her school to play with her, her grandmother would not have objected. But she did not ask, nor was she ever seen with her schoolmates in the shady, rural Medford roads.

Perhaps she might have pined for companions of her own age, but that fortune had provided her with some near by. At the entrance of the lane where she lived, but fronting on a wider thoroughfare, was the house of Mrs. Wilson, a widow of good means and family, who filled less than her proper s.p.a.ce among her own connections, for she went out but little, being engrossed with the care and education of her two delicate little boys to a degree which rendered her fatiguing as a companion--the poorness of their physical const.i.tutions, and the excellence of their moral natures, being her one unending theme. They were not strong enough for the most private of schools, and were too good to be exposed to its temptations, and always had a governess at home.

"Henny" and "c.o.c.ky" Wilson--their names were Henry and c.o.c.kburn, and their light red hair, combed into scanty crests on top of their heads, had suggested these soubriquets--were the amus.e.m.e.nt of their mother's contemporaries, and the scorn of their own. A hundred tales were told of them: as, how when Mrs. Wilson first came home from abroad, where she had lived long after her husband's death there, she brought her boys to Sunday-school, with the audible request to the superintendent that as they were such good little children, they might, if possible, be placed among those of similar, if not equal, qualities; thereby provoking the whole school for the next month to a riotous behaviour which poor Mr.

Milliken found it difficult to subdue.

Mrs. Wilson's friends made some efforts to induce their boys to be friendly with hers, with the result that one July evening, Eugene Talbot, a bright-eyed, curly-haired little dare-devil, who led the revels, patronisingly invited them to join a swimming party after dark in the reservoir which supplied Medford with water--one of those illegal, delicious sprees which to look back on stirs the blood of age.

Henny and c.o.c.ky gave no answer till they had gone, as in duty bound, to consult their mother, who replied: "My dears, I think this would be a very uncomfortable amus.e.m.e.nt. Should you not enjoy much more taking a bath in our own bathroom, with plenty of soap and hot-water?" It required a great effort of self-control on Eugene's part not to knock the heads of the two together when they reported their mother's opinion to him _verbatim_; but he had the feeling that it would be as mean to hit one of the Wilsons as to hit a girl, and he only sent them to Coventry, where they grew up, apparently careless. They were content at home, and they could now and then play with Lucy Morton, who had contrived to make their acquaintance through the garden fence, and who, though three years younger than c.o.c.ky, the youngest, was quite as advanced in every way.

When Mrs. Richard Reed, the social leader of the town, tired of taking her children into Boston to Papanti's dancing-cla.s.s, prevailed upon the great man to come out and open one in Medford, she could not be over-particular in her selection of applicants, the requisite number being hard to make up; but when she opened a note signed, "Sarah C.

Morton," asking admission for the writer's granddaughter, she paused doubtfully. "It is a queerly written note, but it looks like a lady's somehow," she said, consulting her privy council.

"Oh, that is old Mrs. Morton, who comes to our church, don't you know?

They are very respectable, quiet people. I don't believe there's any harm in the little girl," said adviser number one.