University of Virginia Library

43. CHAPTER XLIII.
A SPARED ROD AND A SPOILED CHILD.

Before Alice could recover her power of speech Mrs. Dinneford was able
to tell her all the vague evil which Edward had charged against Poloski, and
to add, in a voice of touching appeal, “Oh, my dear child, do send him
away!”

Then was exhibited all the unregenerate and little less than unholy passion
of which a nominally good girl, “a member of the church in full and
regular standing,” can be capable when she is determined on a lover, and is
forbidden to have him. Alice cried, but not meekly and sweetly; she cried
in a rage, striking her feet on the floor and complaining loudly, and even scolding;
it was a grief as unlovely as that of a child who wails and screams and
snatches for cake. A man who had only seen this young lady in society,
gracious and graceful and entertaining and smiling, would not have known
her now for the same person. Her eyes were red and flashing; the tears

flowed copiously down her cheeks and spotted her dress; her face was swollen
and flushed, and her expression unpleasantly eager and wilful; she had gestures
which were eloquent certainly, but not agreeable to look upon.

The truth is that Alice, good-hearted as she was by nature, had been nearly
spoiled by indulgence. Like many another “sweet girl” of our times, she
had grown up in the belief that life ought to be one everlasting picnic, at least
for young ladies. She felt herself wronged, and believed that she had a right
to be angry, when she was not amused from morning to night. Self-denial she
had none, nor any ennobling longing after labor and duty, but only a desire to
“have a good time.” At last this sybarite of American democracy, this luxurious
child of a society which requires all play and no work of woman, was
faced by a denial and threatened by a disappointment, all for her own good.
She could not endure such unaccustomed hardness; she was in an agony of
grief and in a spasm of rage.

“What stuff for Edward to talk!” she argued, as women and other people
in close quarters will do, evading the real point at issue. “What was Edward
himself a little while ago? He was just as wild and dissipated as anybody.
He is a pretty man to bring up stories against other people! Why didn't he
say this to Count Poloski's face? He didn't dare to. He was afraid there
would be an easy explanation to all this nonsense. He was afraid he might
get his charges back in his own face, hot and heavy. What if Count Poloski
was seen in a low drinking-saloon? In the first place, I don't believe it. I
don't believe that low man, Sweet—a mean, crawling spy and detective! And
then what if he was there? Didn't Charles Dickens go to all the vile places
in this city to study character, and in London too? Count Poloski is a
foreigner. He wants of course to see our criminal classes. It's as likely as
not he is writing a book about America. And then he is a stranger here, and
I dare say he doesn't know every horrid hole in New York, like that wretched
Sweet, and sometimes goes where he wouldn't if he did know. I am perfectly
astonished at Edward. I didn't think he was so uncharitable and ungenerous
and mean—oh, mean, mean—mean as dirt! Before I would do such a
thing as this!—blacken my friend's character behind his back!—for he has
been his friend. Oh, I hate men! I hate 'em and despise 'em! They are all
mean, and I don't believe a word they say! and oh, I wish I was dead and
in my grave!”

Here came a fresh burst of tears, with sobbings and twitchings of the mouth,
and angry stampings and gestures.

Mrs. Dinneford listened and stared in severe silence. For a brief space
this fond and over-indulgent mother was revolted by her daughter. She gazed
at the girl with an eye which told of illusions lost, at least for the moment,
and which sparkled forth contempt and indignation as well as sorrow. It
would have been a relief to her sense of justice and to her feelings to take this
silly young person by the arm and give her a sound shaking.

But Mrs. Dinneford was very clever; it is probable that early and thorough
culture might have developed her into a woman of decided brilliancy; and
even with her limited educational and social advantages, she had at times
flashes of intelligence which were near akin to genius. On the present occasion,
remembering some follies of her own immature years, and perhaps also
the headlong pranks of school-girl companions, she turned from the individual
to the sex. The judgment which she uttered was large enough to be sublime
and severe enough to be terrible.

“I do believe,” she said slowly and sadly, “that no woman ever let her
God stand between herself and the man she wanted.”

“Oh! what do you say that for?” Alice almost screamed, for she had a
conscience under her wilfulness, and it stung her wofully at this instant.

“There have been exceptions,” continued the mother. “But you, my
child, are not one of them.”

Alice slipped out of her ehair upon the floor, and grovelled there in a paroxysm
of humiliation.

“Oh! you have turned against me,” she whimpered. “You are all against
me, you and Edward and Walter. I haven't a friend in my family. If ever I
want to do anything, you all want to stop me, just for the sake of stopping
me, and go to calling me sinful, and silly, and everything else that's horrid. I
am the most snubbed and governed and bullied girl that ever lived. Nobody
wants me to be happy, and everybody wants me to be wretched.”

“Alice, stop! And get up!” commanded the mother, still keeping her
senses, in spite of this piteous wail.

But the girl would not rise until she had conquered. She had one last resource,
a reserve which had given her more than one victory, and she now
brought it into action. She went off in a sobbing, shrieking, jerking fit of
hysterics.

Mrs. Dinneford ought either to have left her, or to have emptied a pitcher
of water over her. Nobody ever indulges in hysterics alone, and no young
lady will lie still and let a favorite silk dress be spoiled. But Mrs. Dinneford
was at bottom soft-hearted, and moreover she was economical. She pitied
her convulsed child, she spared the lilac silk and lace-edgings, and she lost
the battle. In a minute they were both weeping together, and the daughter
cried to better purpose than the parent. In a contest for mastery between two
people who love each other, the victory generally rests with the one who loves
least. By the time that Alice had been lifted from the carpet and laid gently
on her bed and soothed with hartshorn and caresses, she had recovered her
supremacy over the doting creature who nursed her.

“Mamma, don't break my heart!” she sobbed, with her arms around her
mother's neck.

“Oh, no! I must let you break it yourself, and break mine,” wept Mrs.
Dinneford, feeling that she was beaten and giving up the struggle in despair.

“No, no! He is better than you believe,” insisted Alice. “At all events
my fate is fixed,” she continued in a high-flying, sentimental tone which expressed
romantic egotism and self-worship at least as much as affection.
“This man must have me if he wants me. My heart must not be balked except
by him.”

“Oh, my child! does he really love you?” asked the unhappy mother,
catching at straws for comfort. “If he does; that may save all, even if he is
not good.”

“He has pressed my hand,” whispered the silly girl, for whom we must
surely feel a profound commiseration, as well as a wholesome, wrathful desire
to slap her. “And, O mamma, I was so happy! I am sure he will be good
when he sees how happy it makes me to have him good.”

“God's will be done!” assented Mrs. Dinneford, sinking back from the
bed upon her knees. Then, feeling that it was not God's will which was to
be done, but something very different from that, she added, “God have mercy
upon us!”

“Oh, mamma, thank you!” whispered Alice, selfishly alert and prompt to
seize upon this hardly-wrung concession. She put out her hands, drew her
mother's throbbing head to her, and kissed it repeatedly. It was a touching
scene, and to one who did not know the folly which had ruled it and the
wretched outlook which it had into the future, it would have seemed a beautiful
one. It ended when Mrs. Dinneford started abruptly from her knees and
went to her room to fall upon them anew and alone.

Alice had now brought her mother to accept this betrothal; and more than
that, she had brought herself to accept it. It is a curious fact, and indicative
of the dark ways of the feminine soul (not to enter upon the oddities of the
masculine ditto), that up to this time she had not been able to decide whether
she wanted Poloski or not. She was fascinated by him, and yet she was a
good deal afraid that he might make a bad husband, and between these conflicting
sentiments she had seesawed. Opposition had determined her; the
moment the man was forbidden fruit she longed for him; in the struggle to
have her will she had worked herself into a belief that she ardently loved him;
and perhaps there was as much affection in the flurry as there is in most of
those spasms of the inwards which lead to nuptials.

When Poloski made his next call, which happened on the morning following,
it was delicately borne in upon him that a hand would be his for the asking.
Women have numerous indescribable ways of imparting such information,
while preserving an air of heavenly guilelessness and freedom from
earthly motives, as if they no more thought of marrying than the angels. The
man who picks up what is laid fairly and squarely under his nose, is nevertheless
left under the impression that he discovered it all by himself and with
great difficulty. It is like giving a mouse to a kitten; tommy invariably supposes
that he caught it. There are indeed male souls so timid or stupid that
they cannot see their good luck with sufficient clearness to lay a paw upon it.
We have read of a lover who shot himself, in despair of winning his Dulcinea,
on the very day that she drowned herself because he could not be coaxed to
propose. But Count Poloski was not a suitor of this humble and unhopeful
stripe. When the mouse was pitched under his whiskers he alighted upon it
with beautiful promptness and dexterity.

We cannot say what Alice did; perhaps she incidentally gave him a flower;
perhaps she accidentally touched his hand; perhaps she only gazed meekly into
his eyes. But in the next second the Count had her by the trembling fingers,
and was pouring his tale of exotic love into her simple Yankee ears. In the
next minute she had cried, and had laid her hot, wet face on his noble shoulder,
and had whispered a frightened, happy “Yes,” and in short was a “gone
goose.”

Poor little feminine republican! She did not really admire the man; she
more or less thought him a jackanapes, and perhaps a bad fellow; but her
democratic soul was entangled and laid helpless in the meshes of a title. How
many daughters of freedom, not to dilate upon a “smart sprinkling” of fathers
and mothers to the same, have gone and done likewise! One wonders whether
the time will ever come when our countrymen will be able to say with unshakable
pride, feeling that there is no loftier boast on earth, “I am an American
citizen!” Probably not while our politics remain in their present demagogical
chaos. If bosses continue to rule our cities, and old war-horses to
neigh brutish stupidities in our Congress, it will be well if the entire nation

does not follow the example of Alice Dinneford, prostrating itself before some
Poloski and saying, “Rule thou over us.”

When poor Mrs. Dinneford was informed of the betrothal, she could say
nothing cheerful to her daughter or her prospective son-in-law. She kissed
Alice with convulsive affection, and endured Poloski's kiss without returning
it. During the greater part of the day she remained in her room weeping,
reading the Bible, and praying. Tupper was no comfort; even Bunyan failed
to lift her the least bit out of her Slough of Despond; she could cling to nothing
but the “Promises.”

But grieved as she was, she made no further fight; once more her child
had altogether triumphed over her; the sorrowful woman, to use her own
forcible phrase, “had given up.” When Edward called in the afternoon she
wrote on a card, “Alice is engaged—I cannot talk of it,” and so sent him
away unseen. A similar missive met Lehming, and got rid of him likewise.
Nor would Alice see her cousins; she was furious at them still for maligning
her Poloski; she did not mean to forgive them unless they came to her wedding.

Perhaps, too, she kept her room out of a vague fear lest these cruel men
had found some new accusation against her Count which would come hard
upon forcing her to dimiss him. We must leave her to her selected destiny,
premising that it will not be a wellspring of pleasure.