University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
DR. GILBERT AND HIS DAUGHTER “COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING.”

Dr. Gilbert was a thrifty man. He held petty
mortgages on half the farms in town, and carried on a
large farm himself. Sometimes, when a sudden death
brought forcibly to his mind the uncertain tenure of life,
he became uncomfortable with the thought that his affairs
were so extended and so complicated, that no one
but himself could ever settle them safely and advantageously.
At the close of the day on which he held
his interview with Arthur Blague, and that young man
determined to enter the mill at Hucklebury Run, he
drank his tea, and taking a newspaper in his hand, subsided
into a brown study.

The occasion was the sudden revolution that had
taken place in Arthur's plans of life in consequence of
his father's death. Would his own little boy ever be
brought to such a trial? He must not be. He would
set apart now, while it was possible, a sum that should
be sacredly kept from all danger of loss, so that, in any
contingency, little Fred should not miss his education.

Having fully determined upon this, and arranged

the plan by which the end should be effected, he called
Fred to him, and took him upon his knee. Aunt Catharine
was washing the silver, sitting high and trim in
her tea-chair, and Fanny sat near the window reading.

“I wonder what we shall make of this little boy,”
said the doctor, with one big arm around him, and the
other fondling roughly his white little hand.

“Oh! I know what I'm going to be,” said Fred, with
a very wise and positive look, and a tone that indicated
that he had never yet divulged his convictions to anybody.

“Tell us all about it, then,” said the doctor.

“Oh! I know—I know. You can't guess,” responded
the boy, with a smack of the lips that showed it must
be something very delightful indeed.

“I guess,” said the doctor very thoughtfully, “that
you're going to be a great lawyer.”

“No:” and the boy looked wise, and smacked his
lips again, and said it was “something better'n that.”

“A minister,” suggested Aunt Catharine.

“Something better'n that.” (A shake of the head,
and a wise look out of the window.)

“A doctor,” Fanny guessed.

“I hope it's better'n that,” said the disgusted young
gentleman—“nasty old pills.”

“Tut—tut, Freddy! Your father is a doctor,” said
Dr. Gilbert with mock severity.

“Well, I don't think it would be a good plan to
have two Dr. Gilberts; do you, papa?”

“Why not?”

“Because the people would be always making mistakes,
and getting the wrong one.”

The doctor joined Aunt Catharine and Fanny in a
laugh over Fred's ingenuity, and then said: “Now I can
guess what my little boy is going to be. He's going
to be a great scholar first; and then, after a while, he
is going to be a great man, and go to Congress, and
make splendid speeches, and then perhaps he'll be President
of the United States. That's it, isn't it?”

The boy was not to be won from his first secret choice
by any eloquent description of the glory of scholarship, or
the grandeur of political elevation, and so made his old
reply, that it was something “better'n that.” Then all
gave it up, and declared they could not guess at all.
He must tell them, or they should never know.

“I'm going to be a cracker-peddler,” said Fred, in a
tone of triumph.

“A cracker-peddler!” exclaimed the astonished father.
“Dr. Gilbert's little son a cracker-peddler? What
could put such nonsense into your foolish little head?”

“Yes, sir, I'm going to be a cracker-peddler,” persisted
the boy. “I'm going to have two splendid horses with
long tails, and a cart painted red, and I'm going to stop
at the tavern, and have all the baker's gingerbread I
want to eat, and give Aunt Catharine and Fanny all
they want to eat; and I'm going to have a beautiful whip
with my name worked into the handle, and a spotted
dog with a brass collar on his neck, to run under the
cart; and fur gloves, and a shiny cap, and—”

Here the little boy was interrupted by such a hearty
and long-continued laugh from his three fond listeners,
that he could proceed no further. As he looked with
surprise upon the different members of the group, his
sensitive nature took umbrage at the inexplicable merriment,

and he turned his face to his father's breast, and
burst into a fit of violent weeping. It took many words
of tender assurance from all the offending parties to restore
the child's composure, and when, at last, the smiles
shone out through the tears, Dr. Gilbert was ready to
tell him—a baby in years and thought—what he proposed
to do with him.

“I wish to have my boy,” said Dr. Gilbert, with a
new tenderness which the child's tears had engendered,
“be the best little scholar in Crampton. He must study
very hard, and improve all his time, and learn just as
fast as he can. By and by, when he gets a little older,
and begins to fit for college, we shall have him recite to
Mr. Wilton, and Mr. Wilton will teach him Latin and
Greek, and a great many things that he doesn't know
any thing about now; and then, after a while, he will
go away to college, and be a grand young man, and
study very hard, and be the best scholar in his class;
and when he has been there four years, he will graduate,
and deliver the valedictory address, and his papa will
be on the platform to hear him, and perhaps Aunt
Catharine and Sister Fanny will be there too. Won't
that be splendid, now? Won't that be a great deal
better than to be a cracker-peddler?”

The boy was sober and thoughtful for a few minutes,
and then inquired: “Shall I be in the college alone?
Will nobody that I know be there with me? Won't
Arthur Blague be there?”

“Arthur Blague will be too old then, my son,” said
the doctor. “Besides, poor Arthur Blague can't go to
college at all. He has lost his father, and has not money
enough. Poor Arthur is going to work down at Hucklebury

Run, to get money to support his mother and little
Jamie.”

“Why, father!” exclaimed Miss Fanny Gilbert.

The doctor looked up, struck by the peculiar tone of
surprise and pain that characterized his daughter's exclamation.
Fanny blushed, then she grew pale, and
trembled in every fibre of her frame.

Aunt Catharine's eyes flashed fire. “I think it's a
sin and a shame,” said Aunt Catharine, “that the noblest
young man in Crampton should be allowed to waste his
life in a factory under such a man as old Ruggles, when
there are so many here who are able to help him.”

“He wouldn't accept help, if it were offered to him,”
said the doctor drily.

“Then I'd make him,” said Aunt Catharine decidedly.

“You'd work miracles, doubtless,” responded Dr.
Gilbert; and then, the conversation promising to lapse
into an uncongenial channel, he put down his little boy,
rose from his chair, and left the room.

“I think it's the most shameful thing I ever knew
your father to consent to,” continued Aunt Catharine,
addressing herself to Fanny.

Fanny would not trust herself to speak; so, to
avoid conversation, she left Fred with his aunt, and ascended
to her chamber; and now that we have the
young woman alone and cornered, we will talk about
her.

It has already appeared in these pages that she was
tall and queenly in her carriage, that she was ambitious,
that she had been crowded into early development, that
she had been moved by public praise, that she had

dreamed of a public career. Whatever there was of the
strong and masculine in her nature, had, under her
father's vigorous policy, been brought into prominence;
yet there was another side to both her nature and her
character. If she had a masculine head, she had a feminine
heart. If she felt inspired by a man's ambition,
she was informed by a woman's sensibility. If, in one
phase of her character and constitution, she exhibited
the power to organize and execute, in what the world
would style a manly way, in another phase she betrayed
the possession of rare susceptibility to the most delicate
emotions, and the sweetest affections and passions. The
question as to Miss Gilbert's life was, then, simply a
question as to which side of her nature should obtain
and retain the predominance. In a woman of positive
qualities like hers, this contrariety must inevitably be
the basis of many struggles, and, in a world of shifting
circumstances and various influences, she would have difficulty
in achieving a satisfactory adjustment of herself.

When Fanny Gilbert entered her chamber, she
closed the door and locked it. Then she went to her
mirror to see what and how much her face had betrayed.
The mirror gave her no answer. It only
showed her a face in which the color went and came,
and went and came again, and a pair of eyes that would
have been blue had they not been gray, or gray had
they not been blue. The double nature discovered itself
hardly less in her physical than in her mental characteristics.

Fanny Gilbert did not love Arthur Blague. So far
as she knew, he did not love her. They had, as neighbors,
as early playmates, and, at one time, as schoolmates,

been much associated. Her father and Arthur's
father had been excellent friends. Her mother and Arthur's
mother had been intimately neighborly. But,
though she had never loved him, she admired him; and
as he was the superior of any young man of her acquaintance,
in manly beauty and all manly qualities, it
is not strange that, quite unconsciously, her life's possibilities
had yoked themselves with his life's possibilities.
One thing was certain: her beau ideal—and by this is
meant, of course, her ideal beau—had marvellously resembled
Arthur Blague; and when that beau ideal
stepped down from its height of splendid possibilities,
into actualities of life that were not only prosy but repulsive,
she was sadly shocked.

“Humph!” (a fine nasal ejaculation of impatient
contempt, accompanied by a decided elevation of the
organ used on the occasion.) “What do I care for Arthur
Blague?” followed the ejaculation; and her eyes,
in which the gray and blue were struggling for the mastery,
flashed proudly in the mirror.

Certainly! Of course! What did she care for Arthur
Blague? Nobody had accused her of caring any
thing for him. Besides, how could a girl be in love who
was going to have a career? Love meant marriage at
some time. Love meant subordination to somebody.
So the heart, with its petals all formed and ready to be
kissed into bloom, (had the kiss been ready,) was coolly
tied so that it could not bloom at all. The head passed
the string around the opening bud, and half-pitied the
restraint of its throbbing life. The blue eyes looked
softly into the mirror no longer; there was no longer
any clash of colors; they had changed to gray.

Miss Gilbert, having discarded all thoughts of Arthur
as a man whose life sustained any relation to hers, proceeded
to think of him simply as a human being of the
masculine gender, and an indefinite capacity for improvement.
Could one like Arthur Blague become a slave?
Arthur was a young man, and should have a young
man's will. Would he—could he—bend that will to
the will of a mean and sordid man, for bread? She was
nothing but a woman, and she would not do it. No:
she would starve first. Must there not be something
mean and weak in a character that could so adapt itself
to the shifting exigencies and paltry economies of life?
He had always been gentle; now he had become quite
a girl. He had consented to become the servant of an
inferior—to place himself upon a level with inferiors.

“There's something wrong about Arthur Blague,”
soliloquized Miss Gilbert, “or he never could do this.
Never!”

What a wise young woman! How wise all young
women are at sixteen!

Having decided that Arthur Blague was nothing to
her, and gone still further, and decided that there was a
fatal defect in the young man somewhere, Miss Gilbert
sat down in calm self-complacency, and commenced to
read some loose leaves of manuscript. They were not
old letters; they were not new letters. They were not
even school-girl compositions. They were something of
much more interest and importance. Fanny read page
after page while the daylight lasted, and then lighted
her lamp, and read on until she had completed them all.

When she had finished them, she pushed them from
her with a sigh, and, burying her face in her hands.

subsided into deep thought and a deep chair at the same
moment. While she is thinking, a few words about
the manuscript. Perhaps a marked passage in a country
newspaper which lies on the table before the young
woman, will the most readily introduce us to the character
of these interesting pages, in Fanny's own hand-writing:

“We trust that we shall be deemed guilty of no indelicate
breach of confidence, in giving publicity to a
statement that by some means has found its way out
of the private circle to which it was originally communicated,
to the effect that a young lady, not a hundred
miles from the neighboring village of Crampton—
the highly accomplished daughter of a distinguished
physician—is now busily engaged upon a work of fiction.
The fair authoress, we are assured, has not yet
exhausted the delicious term of `sweet sixteen,' though
she has already, in another field of effort, demonstrated
the possession of those rare gifts and aptitudes which
will enable her to succeed abundantly in the arduous
career which she has chosen. We shall anticipate the
essay of this new candidate for public honors with unusual
interest. In the mean time, we beg her pardon,
and that of her friends, if this early announcement of her
intentions shall be deemed premature or unwarranted.”

So this manuscript was Fanny's new “work of fiction,”
and so Fanny had chosen a literary career. How
the fact that she was engaged in writing ever found its
way into the Littleton Examiner, she was utterly at a
loss to imagine. It was true that she had spoken of the
matter to an intimate friend—a young woman, who
knew another young woman who was very well acquainted

with Rev. J. Desilver Newman, who, of course,
knew his neighbor, the editor of the “Examiner,” and
who, in fact, had the credit of writing the articles for
that paper; but it was hardly possible that the news
should have got out in that way. One thing was certain:
she had been indiscreet. She should have told
no one, and then no one would have known any thing
about it. She should have written all the time with her
gray eyes; for the blue eyes sought for sympathy and
communion. She had told one friend, because the
woman in her demanded that she should tell one friend.
Was the public announcement distasteful to her?
Fanny Gilbert with blue eyes shrank from it offended;
but afterward, when Fanny Gilbert with gray eyes began
to think about it, she gloried in it. She would be
remarked upon, and pointed out as the young woman
who was writing a novel. Admiring and wondering
eyes would be upon her, whenever she walked through
the street, or appeared in a public assembly. A romantic
personal interest would attach to her. Ah! yes.
Gray-eyed Fanny Gilbert was pleased in spite of herself.

But the work of writing was a very weary and a
very perplexing work. Sometimes she could not make
her characters stand up to be written about. Her life
had not been sufficiently varied to afford her a competent
range of incidents. With the consciousness of the
possession of sufficient power for her work, she had also
the consciousness of poverty of materials. It was of
this poverty that she was thinking so very deeply in her
very deep chair.

It is not to be denied that she was also vexed with

the thought that the hero of her story bore a striking
resemblance to Arthur Blague, and that, although that
young man had ceased to be a hero in her eyes, she
could not change him for any other young man she
knew. There were other uncomfortable thoughts that
came to her with this. She had never communicated
her designs to her father, and she was not certain that
he would regard them with favor.

Her reverie, which had been somewhat protracted,
was disturbed at last by the sound of feet upon the
stairs, and then by a strong rap at her door. She rose
hurriedly, thrust her manuscript into the desk, and then
admitted her father and little Fred.

“Fred wishes you to put him to bed,” said her
father, “and Catharine says you have received a late
Littleton paper,” he added. “Ah! here it is;” and
the doctor laid his hand upon it.

Fanny put out both her hands in pantomimic deprecation.

“You can have it again, of course,” said the doctor;
“I only wish to look at the probate notices:” saying
which, he bade Fred “good night,” and walked down
stairs.

There were some very stupid and very tremulous
fingers engaged that night in undressing the little boy,
and when he said “Our Father who art in heaven” to
her, she was thinking only of her father who was down
stairs reading “probate notices,” in the Littleton Examiner.
The sweet little “Amen” was just breathed
when she heard her father's steps in the hall, and his
voice calling “Fanny,” at the foot of the stairs.

Fanny looked in the glass again, and then went

slowly down stairs. Every part of her varied nature
was awake and on the alert. A gentle, sympathetic
word would win her into tenderness and tractableness;
while harsh dealing would arouse her to opposition the
most positive. She would like, of all things the most,
to have her father talk encouragingly and sympathetically
of her new enterprise. The woman and the
daughter were delicately alive to any gentle word or
kind counsel that the strong man and the father might
utter; but the ambitious aspirant for public applause
was sensitive in an equal degree, and, firmly throned,
was prepared imperiously to defend her prerogatives
and pleasures.

Miss Gilbert entered the drawing-room with any
thing but the air of a child or a culprit—not defiantly,
but as if she were prepared for any event, and rather
expected the event to be unpleasant.

“Have you seen that paragraph?” inquired the doctor
excitedly, extending the copy of the Littleton Examiner
to Fanny, with his thumb half-covering the familiar
lines.

“I have, sir,” replied Fanny, coolly.

“What does it mean?” The doctor's eyes flashed,
and he spoke loudly and harshly.

“I don't know, sir.”

“You don't know, eh? I know.”

“Perhaps you will tell me, father.”

“Fanny, Fanny, this will not do. You must not
speak to me with such a look and tone. You know
very well that this paragraph can refer only to you.
Have you ever given authority to any one to publish
such a paragraph as that?”

“I certainly never have,” Fanny replied, very decidedly.

“Have you ever,” pursued her father, “said to any
one any thing from which this impertinent paragraph
could be made?”

“I suppose I have, to an intimate friend.”

“Were you hoaxing her, or telling her the truth?”

“I told her the truth.”

“To an intimate friend, eh? To an intimate friend,
and not to me, eh? Why not to me?”

“Because I feared that you would not favor my
project.”

“You are very frank, upon my word. So far as
you could guess what my will would be, you would disobey
it. What have you been writing?”

Miss Gilbert was angry. She did not look into her
father's face, but studied the paper on the wall.

“Fanny, tell me what you have been writing.”

Still looking at the wall, Fanny replied, “I have
begun to write a novel, and only begun. I have not
been without the hope that it would please my
father—that it would be a happy surprise to him. I
have not been—I have never been—a disobedient daughter.
I have followed your wishes all my life, and no
being in the world has had so much to do in bringing
me to the undertaking of this enterprise as you have. I
am ambitious, because you have fostered ambition in
me. I have been kept before the public in one way and
another ever since I can remember. I have been taught
to regard public applause as a very pleasant and
precious thing. To excel in study, to shine in examinations
and public exhibitions, to win praise for wonderful

achievements, has been the aim of my life for years, and
to this you have always pushed me. You have heard
me publicly praised here, in our own church, and you
were pleased. I feel now that I can never be content
with the common lot of woman, and I declare that I
will not accept it. I will not live a humdrum, insignificant
life of subordination to the wills and lives of
others, save in my own way. I will have a career.”

Dr. Gilbert was utterly astonished. He had watched
his daughter with painful interest as she revealed herself
to him in her first open attempt to cut loose from
his will and to assert herself, and when she closed, he
could only echo her closing words—“a career!” A
woman with “a career” was something he could not
comprehend at all; or, if he comprehended it, he did
not comprehend the motives of his daughter's ambition.
That he had ever contributed to this ambition he did
not admit for a moment; but he was puzzled as to
what course to pursue. He saw that his daughter
might be easily exasperated; so the bright thought
occurred to him that perhaps this desire for a career
might possibly be a sort of mental small-pox or measles,
which must run its course, and would then leave her
free from the liability to a recurrence of the disease.

“Then you have determined to write this novel?”
said Dr. Gilbert.

“It would be the saddest disappointment of my life
to be obliged to relinquish it.”

“And to publish it?”

“I have no motive for writing a book that is not to
be published.”

“I did not know,” said the doctor, “but you would

do it for your own improvement. It would be a very
fine diversion, you know, in case you take up German
and Hebrew, and the higher mathematics, this winter.”

“Must I forever be doing something for my own
improvement? Must I be forever studying? I am tired
of always taking in; I wish to do something, and to be
recognized as a—as a—power in the world.” Fanny
said this very fervently, but the last words sounded
very large, and she knew they seemed ridiculous to her
father, who smiled, almost derisively, as the hot blood
mounted to her temples.

The half-amused, half-pitying contempt which Fanny
saw in her father's face roused her anger. She rose
from her chair impetuously, and stamping one foot
upon the floor, exclaimed: “I wish to God I were a
man! I think it a curse to be a woman.”

“Why, Fanny!” exclaimed Dr. Gilbert, greatly
shocked.

“I do think it a curse to be a woman. I never
knew a woman who was not a slave or a nonentity, nor
a man who did not wish to make her one or the other.
A woman has no freedom, and no choice of life. She
can take no position, and have no power, without becoming
a scoffing and a by-word. You have been talking
to Fred ever since he was in the cradle about a
career; you have placed before him the most exciting
motives to effort, but you have never dreamed of my
being any thing more than Dr. Gilbert's very clever
daughter; or a tributary to some selfish man's happiness
and respectability. I say that I will not accept
this lot, and that I do not believe my Maker ever intended
I should accept it.”

All this Miss Gilbert uttered vehemently, and enforced
with sundry emphatic gestures, and then she
turned to leave the room.

“Fanny, sit down!” The doctor's will was rising.

“I can listen without sitting, sir; but I should like
to retire.”

“Sit down, I say.”

Fanny altered the position of her chair very deliberately,
placed herself before it very slowly, and settled
into her seat very proudly indeed.

“Fanny Gilbert, never speak such words to me
again, while you live. I will not allow it; I will not
permit you to insult me, and disgrace yourself, by such
language. I am astonished. I am confounded. I am
—ah—who has been putting such mischievous, such
blasphemous notions into your head?”

“Women never have any notions, except such as
are put into their heads, I suppose, of course.”

“Do you use this tone of irony to me? Hear what
I have to say, and do not speak to me—do not speak to
me again to-night. You have begun what you call a
career, and have begun it just where such an inexperienced
girl as you would naturally begin it. I understand
your case, I think, and I shall not interfere
with your purpose. Nay, it is my will that you go on
and satisfy yourself—that you prove the utter hollowness
of your notions. I will go further than this. If,
when you have finished your book, you will submit it
to Mr. Wilton, and he decides that it will not absolutely
disgrace you, I will find a publisher for it. But
by all means be as diligent as you can be with your work.
Do with your might what your hands have undertaken

to do, and do not leave it until it shall be finished.
You can go.”

Browbeaten, but not subdued, Miss Gilbert rose
and sailed out of the room. Her heart was in a tumult.
Her eyes were full of tears. Her head ached almost
to bursting with the pressure of rebellious blood. The
moment she left the presence of the strong will that had
roused her, the woman's want of solace and sympathy
swept through her whole nature. Meeting Aunt Catharine
in the upper hall, she cast herself, sobbing, and soft
as a child, upon the spinster's bosom, and was led by
that good woman into her room. Then Aunt Catharine
sat down upon Fanny's bed, and took Fanny's head
upon her shoulder, and passed her arm around her
waist, and sat in perfect silence with her for half an
hour, while her niece enjoyed unrestrained the “luxury
of grief.”

“There, dear, have you got down to where you can
pray?” inquired Aunt Catharine, putting off the young
head.

Fanny smiled faintly, said, “Thank you, aunt, it has
done me so much good,” then kissed her affectionately,
and bade her “good night.”

Fanny's prayer was a very broken and unsatisfactory
one that night, and the doctor's, it is to be feared,
was hardly more consolatory. A long reverie followed
the retirement of his daughter from his presence. At
the close of this, he took up the copy of the Littleton
Examiner, and re-perused the offensive paragraph. It
had changed somehow. It did not seem so offensive as
it did at first. Then he subsided into another reverie,
in which the possibilities of Fanny's career were followed

very far—so far, that Dr. Gilbert had become a
very noted man, for having a famous daughter, who had
contributed richly to the literature of her country. He
began, before he was conscious of it, to sympathize with
his daughter's project. Many excellent women had
written books, and why not “the highly accomplished
daughter of a distinguished physician”?

Ah! if Fanny had possessed more tact, if her eyes
had been just a shade bluer, she could have made her
peace with her father that night, and sapped the will of
the strong man through the weak point of his character,
and made him essentially her servant.