Helen and Arthur Part 14

We do not know that Mittie can be called attractive, but she is young, handsome and intellectual, and there is a charm in youth, beauty and intellect that too often disarms the judgment, and renders it blind to moral defects.

When Mittie returned from school, crowned with the laurels of the inst.i.tution in which she had graduated, wearing the stature, and exhibiting the manners of a woman, though still in years a child, she appeared to her young companions surrounded with a _prestige_, in whose dazzling rays her childish faults were forgotten.

Mrs. Gleason, who had been looking forward with dread to the hour of her step-daughter's return, met her with every demonstration of affectionate regard. She had never seen Mittie, and as her father always spoke of her as "the child," palliating her errors on the plea of her motherless childhood, she was not prepared for the splendidly developed, womanly girl, who received her kind advances with a haughty and repelling coldness, which brought an angry flush to the father's brow.

"Mittie," said he, emphatically, "this is your _mother_. Remember that she is to receive from all my children the respect and affection to which she is eminently ent.i.tled."

"I know she is your wife, sir, and that her name is Mrs. Gleason, but that does not make her a mother of mine," replied the young girl, with surprising coolness.

"Mittie," exclaimed the father--what he would have said was averted by a hand laid gently on his arm, and a beseeching look from the eyes of the amiable step-mother.

"Do not constrain her to call me mother," she said. "I do not despair of gaining her affections in time. I care not for the mere name, unaccompanied by the feelings which make it so dear and holy."

One would have supposed that a remark like this, uttered in a calm, mild tone, a tone of mingled dignity and affability, would have touched a heart of only fifteen summer's growth, but Mittie knew not yet that she had a heart. She had never yet really loved a human being. Insensible to the sweet tendernesses of nature, it was reserved for the lightning bolt of pa.s.sion to shiver the hard, bark-like covering, and penetrate to the living core.

She triumphed in the thought that in the struggle for power between her step-mother and herself she had gained the ascendency, that she had never yielded one iota of her will, never called her _mother_, or acknowledged her legitimate and sacred claims. She began to despise the woman, who was weak enough, as she believed, to be overruled by a young girl like herself. But she did not know Mrs. Gleason--as a scene which occurred just one year after her return will show.

Mittie was seated in her own room, where she always remained, save when company called expressly to see her. She never a.s.sisted her mother either in discharging the duties of hospitality or in performing those little household offices which fall so gracefully on the young.

Engrossed with her books and studies, pursuits n.o.ble and enn.o.bling in themselves, but degraded from their high and holy purpose when cultivated to the exclusion of the lovely, feminine virtues, Mittie was almost a stranger beneath her father's roof.

The chamber in which she was seated bore elegant testimony to the kindness and liberality of her step-mother--who, before Mittie's return from school, had prepared and furnished this apartment expressly for her two young daughters. As Mittie was the eldest, and to be the first occupant, her supposed tastes were consulted, and her imagined wants all antic.i.p.ated. Mrs. Gleason had a small fortune of her own, so that she was not obliged to draw upon her husband's purse when she wished to be generous. She had therefore spared no expense in making this room a little sanctum-sanctorum, where youth would delight to dwell.

"Mittie loves books," she said, and she selected some choice and elegant works to fill the shelves of a swinging library--of course she must be fond of paintings, and the walls were adorned with pictures whose gilded frames relieved their soft, neutral tint.

"Young girls love white. It is the appropriate livery of innocence."

Therefore bed-curtains, window-curtains, and counterpane were of the dazzling whiteness of snow. Even the table and washstand were white, ornamented with gilded wreaths.

"Mittie was fond of writing--all school girls are," therefore an elegant writing desk must be ready for her use--and though her love of sewing was more doubtful, a beautiful workbox was ready for her accommodation.

She well knew the character of Mittie, and her personal opposition to herself, but she was determined to overcome her prejudices, and bind her to her by every endearing obligation.

"His children _must_ love me," she said, "and all that woman can and ought to do shall be done by me before I relinquish my labors of love."

Mittie enjoyed the gift without being grateful to the giver; she basked in the sunshine of comfort, without acknowledging the source from which it emanated. For one year she had been treated with unvarying tenderness, consideration, and regard, in spite of coldness, haughtiness, and occasional insolence, till she began to despise one who could lavish so much on a thankless, unreturning receiver.

She was surprised when her step-mother entered her room at the unusual hour of bed time--and looking up from the book she was reading, her countenance expressed impatience and curiosity. She did not rise or offer her a chair, but after one rude, fixed stare, resumed her reading.

Mrs. Gleason seated herself with perfect composure, and taking up a book herself, seemed to be absorbed in its contents. There was something so unusual in her manner that Mittie, in spite of her determination to appear imperturbable and careless, could not help gazing upon her with increasing astonishment. She was dressed in a loose night wrapper, her hair was unbraided, and hanging loose over her shoulders, and there was an air of ease and freedom diffused over her person, that added much to its attractions. Mittie had always thought her stiff and formal--now there was a graceful abandonment about her, as if she had thrown off chains which had galled her, or a burden which oppressed.

"To what am I indebted for the honor of this visit, madam?" asked Mittie, throwing her book on the table with unlady-like force.

"To a desire for a little private conversation," replied Mrs. Gleason, looking steadfastly in Mittie's face.

"I am going to bed," said she, with an unsuppressed yawn, "you had better take a more fitting hour."

"I shall not detain you long," replied her step-mother, "a few words can comprehend all I have to utter. This night is the anniversary of the one which brought us under the same roof. I then made a vow to myself that for one year I would labor with a bigot's zeal and a martyr's enthusiasm, to earn the love and ent.i.tle myself to the good opinion of my husband's daughter. I made a vow of self-abnegation, which no Hindoo devotee ever more religiously kept. I had been told that you were cold hearted and selfish; but I said love is invincible and must prevail; youth is susceptible and cannot resist the impressions of grat.i.tude. I said this, Mittie, one year ago, in faith and hope and self-reliance. I have now come to tell you that my vow is fulfilled. I have done all that is due to you, nay, more, far more. It remains for me to fulfill my duties to myself. If I cannot make you _love_ me, I will not allow you to _despise_ me."

The bold, bright eye of Mittie actually sunk before the calm, rebuking glance, which gave emphasis to every cool, deliberate word. Here was the woman she had dared to treat with disdain, as undeserving her respect, as the usurper of a place to which she had no right, whom she had predetermined to _hate_ because she was her _step-mother_, and whom she continued to dislike because she had predetermined to do so, all at once a.s.suming an att.i.tude of commanding self-respect, and a.s.serting her own claims with irresistible dignity and truth. Taken completely by surprise, her usual fluency of language forsook her, and she sat one moment confounded and abashed. _Her claims?_ it was the first time the idea of her step-mother having any legitimate claims on her, had a.s.sumed the appearance of reality. Something glanced into her mind, foreshadowing the truth that after all she was more dependent on her father's wife, than her father's wife on her. It was like the flashing of lamplight on the picture-frames and golden flower leaves on the table, at which they both were seated.

"I have been alone the whole evening," continued Mrs. Gleason, in a still calmer, more decided tone, "preparing myself for this interview; for the time for a full understanding is come. All the sacrifices I have made during the past year were for your father's peace and your own good. To him I have never complained, nor ever shall I; but I should esteem myself unworthy to be his wife, if I willingly submitted longer to the yoke of humiliation. I tell thee truly, Mittie, when I say, I care not for your love, for which I have so long striven in vain. You do not love your own family, and why should I expect to inspire what they, father, brother and sister have never kindled in your breast? I care not for your love, but I _will_ have your respect. I defy you from this moment ever to treat me with insolence. I defy you henceforth, ever by word, look or thought, to a.s.sociate me with the idea of _contempt_."

Her eye flashed with long suppressed indignation, and her face reddened with the liberated stream of her emotions. Rising, and gathering up her hair, which was sweeping back from her forehead, she took her lamp and turned to depart. Just as she reached the door she turned back and added, in a softer tone,

"Though you will never more see me in the aspect of a seeker after courtesy and good will, I shall never reject any overtures for reconciliation. If the time should ever come, when you feel the need of counsel and sympathy, the necessity of a friend; if your heart ever awakens, Mittie, and utters the new-born cry of helplessness and pain, you will find me ready to listen and relieve. Good night."

She pa.s.sed from her presence, and Mittie felt as if she had been in a dream, so strange and unnatural was the impression left upon her mind.

She was at first perfectly stunned with amazement, then consciousness, accompanied with some very disagreeable stinging sensations, returned.

When a very calm, self-possessed person allows feeling or pa.s.sion to gain the ascendency over them, they are invested for the moment with overmastering power.

"I have never done justice to her intellect," thought she, recalling the words of her step-mother, with an involuntary feeling of admiration; "but I want not her love. When it is necessary to my happiness I will seek it. Love! she never cared any thing about me; she does not pretend that she did. She tried to win my good will from policy, not sensibility; and this is the origin of all the comforts and luxuries with which she has surrounded me. Why should I be grateful then? Thank Heaven! I am no hypocrite; I never dissembled, never professed what I do not feel. If every one were as honest and independent as I am, there would be very little of this vapid sentimentality, this love-breath, which comes and goes like a night mist, and leaves nothing behind it."

The next morning Mittie could not help feeling some embarra.s.sment when she met her step-mother at the breakfast-table, but the lady herself was not in the least disconcerted; she was polite and courteous, but calm and cold. There was a barrier around her which Mittie felt that she could not pa.s.s, and she was uncomfortable in the position in which she had placed herself.

And thus time went on--thus the golden opportunities of youth fled.

Helen was still at school; Louis at college. But when Louis graduated, he came home, accompanied by a cla.s.smate whose name was Bryant Clinton--and his coming was an event in that quiet neighborhood. When Louis announced to his father that he was going to bring with him a young friend and fellow collegian, Mr. Gleason was unprepared for the reception of the dashing and high bred young gentleman who appeared as his guest.

Mittie happened to be standing on the rustic bridge, near the celebrated bleaching ground of Miss Thusa, when her brother and his friend arrived.

She was no lover of nature, and there was nothing in the bland, dewy stillness of declining day to woo her abroad amid the glories of a summer's sunset. But from that springing arch, she could look up the high road and see the dust glimmering like particles of gold, telling that life had been busy there--and sometimes, as at the present moment, when something unusually magnificent presented itself to the eye, she surrendered herself to the pleasure of admiration. There had been heavy, dun, rolling clouds all the latter part of the day, and when the sun burst forth behind them, he came with the touch of Midas, instantaneously trans.m.u.ting every thing into gold. The trunks of the trees were changed to the golden pillars of an antique temple, the foliage was all powdered with gold, here and there deepening into a bronze, and sweeping round those pillars in folds of gorgeous tapestry.

The windows of the distant houses were all gleaming like molten gold; and every blade of gra.s.s was tipped with the same glittering fluid.

Mittie had never beheld any thing so gloriously beautiful. She stood leaning against the light railing, unconscious that she herself was bathed in the same golden light--that it quivered in the dark waves of her hair, and gilt the roses of her glowing cheek. She did not know how bright and resplendent she looked, when two hors.e.m.e.n appeared in the high road, gathering around them in quivers the glittering arrows darting from the sky. As they rapidly approached, she recognized her brother, and knew that the young gentleman who accompanied him must be his friend, Bryant Clinton. The steed on which he was mounted was black as a raven, and the hair of the young man was long, black, and flowing as his horse's sable mane. As he came near, reining in the high mettled animal, while his locks blew back in the breeze, enriched with the same golden l.u.s.tre with which every thing was shining, Mittie suddenly remembered Miss Thusa's legend of the black horseman, with the jetty hair entwined in the maiden's bleeding heart. Strange, that it should come back to her so vividly and painfully.

Louis recognized his sister, standing on the airy arch of the bridge, and rode directly to the garden gate. Clinton did the same, but instead of darting through the gate, as Louis did, he only dismounted, lifted his hat gracefully from his head, and bowed with lowly deference--then throwing his arm over the saddle bow, he waited till the greeting was over. Mittie was not the favorite sister of Louis, for she had repelled him as she had all others by her cold and haughty self-concentration--but though he did not _love_ her as he did Helen, she was his sister, she appeared to him the personification of home, of womanhood, and his pride was gratified by the full blown flower and splendor of her beauty. She had gained much in height since he had last seen her; her hair, which was then left waving in the wild freedom of childhood, was now gathered into bands, and twisted behind, showing the cla.s.sic contour of her head and neck. Louis had never thought before whether Mittie was handsome or not.

She had not seemed so to him. He had never spoken of her as such to his friend. Helen, sweet Helen, was the burden of his speech, the one lovely sister of his heart. The idea of being proud of Mittie never occurred to him, but now she flashed upon him like a new revelation, in the glow and freshness and power of her just developed womanly charms. He was glad he had found her in that picturesque spot, graceful att.i.tude, and partaking largely and richly of the glorification of nature. He was glad that Bryant Clinton, the greatest connoisseur in female beauty he had ever seen, should meet her for the first time under circ.u.mstances of peculiar personal advantage. He thought, too, there was more than her wonted cordiality in her greeting, and that her cheek grew warm under his hearty, brotherly kiss.

"Why, Mittie," cried he, "I hardly knew you, you have grown so handsome and stately. I never saw any one so altered in my life--a perfect Juno.

I want to introduce my friend to you--a n.o.ble hearted, generous, princely spirited fellow. A true Virginian, rather reckless with regard to expenditure, perhaps, but extravagance is a kingly fault--I like it.

He is a pa.s.sionate admirer of beauty, too, Mittie, and his manners are perfectly irresistible. I shall be proud if he admires you, for I a.s.sure you his admiration is a compliment of which any maiden may be proud."

While he was speaking, Clinton followed the beckoning motion of his hand, and approached the bridge. It is impossible to describe the ease and grace of his motions, or the wild charm imparted to his countenance by the long, dark, shining, back-flowing locks, that softened their haughty outline. His hair, eye-lashes and eye-brows were of deep, raven black, but his eyes were a dark blue, a union singularly striking, and productive of wonderful expression. As he came nearer and nearer, and Mittie felt those dark blue, black shaded eyes riveted on her face, with a look of unmistakable admiration, she remembered the words of her brother, and the consciousness of beauty, for the first time, gave her a sensation of pride and pleasure. She was too proud to be vain--and what cared she for gifts, destined, like pearls, to be cast before an unvaluing herd? The young doctor was the only young man whose admiration she had ever thought worthy to secure, and having met from him only cold politeness, she had lately felt for him only bitterness and dislike.

Living as she had done in a kind of cold abstraction, enjoying only the pleasures of intellect, in all the sufficiency of self, it was a matter of indifference to her what people thought of her. She felt so infinitely above them, looking down like the aeronaut, from a colder, more rarefied atmosphere, upon objects lessened to meanness by her own elevation.

She could never look down on such a being as Bryant Clinton. Her first thought was--"Will he dare to look down on me?" There was so much pride, tempered by courtesy, such an air of lofty breeding, softened by grace, so much intellectual power and sleeping pa.s.sion in his face, that she felt the contact of a strong, controlling spirit, a will to which her own might be constrained to bow.

They walked to the house together, while Louis gave directions about the horses, and he entered into conversation at once so easily and gracefully, that Mittie threw off the slight embarra.s.sment that oppressed her, and answered him in the same light spirited tone. She was astonished at herself, for she was usually reserved with strangers, and her thoughts seldom effervesced in brilliant sallies or sparkling repartees. But Clinton carried about with him the wand of an enchanter, and every thing he touched, sparkled and shone with newly awakened or reflected brightness. Every one has felt the influence of that indescribable fascination of manner which some individuals possess, and which has the effect of electricity or magnetism. Something that captivates, even against the will, and keeps one enthralled, in spite of the struggling of pride, and the shame attendant on submission. One of these fascinating, electric, magnetic beings was Clinton. Louis had long been one of his captives, but _he_ was such a gay, frank, confiding, porous hearted being, it was not strange, but that he should break through the triple bars of coldness, haughtiness and reserve, which Mittie had built around her, so high no mortal had scaled them--this was more than strange--it was miraculous.

When Mittie retired that night, instead of preparing for sleep, she sat down in the window, and tried to a.n.a.lyze the charm which drew her towards this stranger, without any volition of her own. She could not do it--it was intangible, evasive and subtle. The effect of his presence was like the sun-burst on the landscape, the moment of his arrival. The dark places of her soul seemed suddenly illumined; the ma.s.sy columns of her intellect turned like the tree trunks, into pillars of gold and light; gilded foliage, in new born leaflets, played about the branches.

She looked up into the heavens, and thought they had never bent in such grandeur and splendor over her, nor the solemn poetry of night ever addressed her in such deep, earnest language. All her senses appeared to have acquired an acuteness, an exquisiteness that made them susceptible almost to pain. The stars dazzled her like sunbeams, and those low, murmuring, monotonous sounds, the m.u.f.fled beatings of the heart of night, rung loudly and distinctly on her ear. Alarmed at the strange excitement of her nerves, she rose and looked round the apartment which her step-mother's hand had adorned, and _ingrat.i.tude_ seemed written in large, dark characters on the soft, grayish colored walls. Why had she never seen this writing before? Why had the debt she owed this long suffering and now alienated benefactress, never before been acknowledged before the tribunal of conscience? Because her heart was awakening out of a life-long sleep, and the light of a new creation was beaming around her.

She took the lamp, and placing it in front of the mirror, gazed deliberately on her person.

"Am I handsome?" she mentally asked, taking out her comb, whose pressure seemed intolerable, and suffering the dark redundance of her hair to flow, unrestrained, around her. "Louis says that I am, and methinks this mirror reflects a glorious image. Surely I am changed, or I have never really looked on myself before."

Yes! she was changed. The light within the cold, alabaster vase was kindled, giving a life and a glow to what was before merely symmetrical and cla.s.sic. There was a color coming and going in her cheek, a warm l.u.s.tre coming and going in her eye, and she could not tell whence it came, nor whither it went.

From this evening a new era in her life commenced.

Days and weeks glided by, and Clinton still remained the guest of Louis.

He sometimes spoke of going home, but Louis said--"not yet"--and the sudden paleness of Mittie's cheek spoke volumes. During all this time, they had walked, and rode, and talked together, and the enchantment had become stronger and more pervading Mr. Gleason sometimes thought he ought not to allow so close an intimacy between his daughter and a young man of whose private character he knew so little, but when he reflected how soon he was to depart to his distant home, probably never to return, there seemed little danger to be apprehended from his short sojourn with them. Then Mittie, though she might be susceptible of admiration for his splendid qualities, and though her vanity might be gratified by his apparent devotion--_Mittie had no heart_. If it were Helen, it would be a very different thing, but Mittie was incapable of love, uninflammable as asbestos, and cold as marble.