University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
THE MINISTER.

The minister who had nearly reached
the door, turned and confronted the two
angry foes he had made by uniting Edgar
and Flora, and answered calmly but
firmly—

`I have further to say, Mr. Channing
and Miss Channing, that in opposing this
union as you have done, you have been
guilty of a great wrong, both to your son
and to yourselves. He could not find
anywhere's a better wife, than this fair
gardener's daughter. Besides beauty in
an unusual degree, as you have yourselves
borne witness, she possessed a
purity of heart, an integrity of character,
rarely to be met with in the higher walks
of life!'

The spendthrift nephew looked black,
and twirled his mustache fiercely.

Miss Margaret curled her pretty lip in
the most scornful derision, and a smile of
bitter irony played about the dimples of
her cheek. The merchant gave only a
rough, surly grunt, by way of expressing
his contempt for the pretensions of the
lowly gardener's daughter; pretensions
that caused her even to be compared with
themselves, who represented `the higher
walks of life,' to which the young clergyman's
words referred. He did not,
however, pay any attention to their expressions
of dislike at his words, but thus
resumed with dignity and firmness.

`You will one day regret the course
you have pursued, and I would advise
you as a friend, to be reconciled to an
event, which it is no longer in your power
to avert. You will believe me, you
will feel proud by and by of your daughter-in-law.'

`Daughter-in-law! Humph,' growled
the gouty old man.

`Did ever one listen to such audacity?'
ejaculated the nephew, who with his eyeglass
stood looking at the minature over
Margaret's chair.

`I will never call Flora Nickerson sister-in-law,
be assured Mr. Upstart,' (the
clergyman's name was Upshur) cried
Margaret.' She has disgraced us!' and
here the young Prinsess put her cambric
kerchief to her eyes and walked up and
down the room with a stamping sort of
tramp that one would hardly beleive her
elegant little feet could execute.

`Uncle,' said the nephew,' shall I'orse
vip 'im?'

`I will not hear another word out of
your mouth, sir!' cried Mr. Channing,
looking terribly belligerent and grasping
the handle of his crutch a little lower
down, as if he meant to use it ere much
space elasped; leave my house, sir, and
never enter it again!

`I would not send for you if I was
dead! I'll be buried by a Roman Catholic
first! It is all a conspiracy between
you and my depraved son and that trollop
of Nickerson's! You are a conspirator,
sir! you — you — Leave my
house, sir! Your cloth only protects you
from the weight of my crutch!'

`To have the imprudence to marry
them, and then to have the insuperable,

unparralleled boldness to come openly
into the house and tell us of it!' cried
Margaret, as she looked after him with
tones of anger and grief shining in her
dark fine eyes.

Slowly and deliberately he walked
from the room and down the steps and
so up the avenue to the gate.

`He is gone and I hope he may break
his neck!' exclaimed Mrs Channing.

`Shall I go after 'im and slap his face
for 'im, cousin?' asked the nephew, Mr.
Frederick Kipper, twirling his rose-scented
kid gloves in his fingers and looking
as if he felt quite courageous enough to
slap the cheek of a man whom he was
pretty well assured would not return the
blow; for he recollected reading somewhere,
he believed in Shakespeare, that
Ministers when struck on one cheek
turned the other also. He thought it
was a very odd sort of a custom, indeed
and wondered at; for he believed that
one cheek was quite enough to have smitten
at the time. But his cousin Margaret
did not see fit to put his courage to the
test, and perhaps it was very well for
Mr. Frederick Kipper that she did not;
for there are brave hearts and noble
spirits beneath the cloth of the clergy,
and insult will by such be resented with
manliness, not borne with cowardly submission.
There are instences in which
if the clergyman may forget `the cloth,'
in the recollection that he is also a man;
and if Mr Kipper had mustered courage
enough to test the non-combatting principles
of the young minister, there is little
doubt but that the other cheek smitten
would have been his own!

There was a few moments' silence in
the apartment after the departure of the
minister. The old man's eyes were
bent seaward in the direction of the receding
vessel, his face gloomy and morose
as hatred and rage and disappointment
would make it. If the devil, in
his coursing up and down the earth had
peeped into the rich merchants' hut he
would have found such pleasant company
there amid his coil-a-waked passions that
he would have entered at once and found
himself quite at home.

Margaret, on her part, felt no more
amiable than her father. Their pride of
family had been stricken in a tender
point! That Edgar, her handsome,
noble, high-splrited brother, should have
ever deigned even to notice one so humble
as the gardener's daughter, was amazing
to her; but that he should have not
only noticed, but spoken and visited and
formed an acquaintance, which matured
to an intimacy that led to such a final catastrophe,
overwhelmed her soul with
shame. Besides, she loved not the maiden
at all! Flora's beauty was a rival
to her own—Flora's virtues were shining
foils to her—we wont say her vices—but
foils to her negative virtues. She therefore
hated her; and if she hated her before,
what must have been the fierce
emotions blazing in her breast to feel
forced upon her mind the irresistible conviction
that that humble, lovely, good,
hated girl, was now her sister! She
could hardly decide, as she rapidly ran
her thoughts over the painful subject,
which was to injure `the family' most—
the descent of Edgar or the elevation to
its level of Flora Nickerson. Either way
she felt they were equally degraded, and
in both conjoined, doubly were they disgraced.
As she arrived, in her thoughts,
to this crisis of reflection, she burst into
tears and threw herself into a rocking-chair,
and began to sob and to rock with
great violence.

`How is this?' cried the old man, turning
round at this sudden out-burst.—
`What—what is the matter? Any thing
worse happened?'

`Nothing worse can happen, father,'
she exclaimed, uncovering her tear-wet

face, and looking at him with all the bitterness
of grief and wounded pride.—
`Nothing worse can be imagined! We
shall never get over it! I am sure I
shall not. We shall never hear the last
of it. The Acres, the Quinceys, the
Adamses, the—the—'

`The Seareses,' suggested Mr. Frederick,
seeing she was at a loss to fill up
her list of great people, that, by the by,
she never visited.

`The Searses, the Appletons, the Sawrences!
Oh dear! they will all hear of
it, and I shall never be thought of. Every
body will despise me and cut me because
I have a brother who has married a gardener's
daughter! I hope the sea may
swallow her up, and drown her into its
deepest depths!'

`Don't take on so, sweet cousin,' said
Mr. Frederick, coming softly up to the
rocking-chair, and tenderly laying his
hand upon her wrist; `if your brother
has thus forgotten himself and the respectability
of the family, believe me
that I never shall.'

Here Mr. Frederick Kepper placed his
hand very emphatically upon that portion
of his buff waistcoat which enveloped his
heart, or the place where his heart may
have been safely suppose! to be. But
Miss Channing was in no mood for consolation,
and so she struck his hand away
very petulantly.

Frederick Kepper was a nephew of
the rich merchant, the only son of a widowed
sister, whose husband had been a
poor lawyer, and died leaving her a very
small pittance. The widow struggled on
for a few years as well as she could, but
finally her health failed her, and unable
to educate her son as she wished to do,
she was compelled, for his sake, to apply
to her brother, avaricious and selfish as
she knew him to be.

He at first received her with great anger,
and then only consented to let her
have double price if she would make his
shirts and do the sewing generally for
the family. This she consented to do,
and for three years continued to school
her son and support herself, when death
kindly released her from a responsibility
which had so long been maintained
through so many trials.

The merchant was not sorry when she
died. The rich are always secretly
pleased to see poor relations die off.
They seem, to them, to be their natural
enemies, watching for them to drop off
into the grave, that they may riot in their
riches. `There is one who will be no
better for my money after I am dead,'
were the pleasing reflections which followed
the knowledge of his sister's death
in the selfish mind of the rich merchant!