University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD.

There was nobody, then, to counsel poor Elsie,
except her father, who had learned to let her have
her own way so as not to disturb such relations
as they had together, and the old black woman,
who had a real, though limited influence over the
girl. Perhaps she did not need counsel. To look
upon her, one might well suppose that she was
competent to defend herself against any enemy
she was like to have. That glittering, piercing
eye was not to be softened by a few smooth
words spoken in low tones, charged with the
common sentiments which win their way to
maidens' hearts. That round, lithe, sinuous figure
was as full of dangerous life as ever lay under
the slender flanks and clean-shaped limbs of a
panther.

There were particular times when Elsie was in
such a mood that it must have been a bold person
who would have intruded upon her with reproof
or counsel. “This is one of her days,” old
Sophy would say quietly to her father, and he
would, as far as possible, leave her to herself.

These days were more frequent, as old Sophy's
keen, concentrated watchfulness had taught her,
at certain periods of the year. It was in the
heats of summer that they were most common
and most strongly characterized. In winter, on
the other hand, she was less excitable, and even
at times heavy and as if chilled and dulled in her
sensibilities. It was a strange, paroxysmal kind
of life that belonged to her. It seemed to come
and go with the sunlight. All winter long she
would be comparatively quiet, easy to manage,
listless, slow in her motions; her eye would lose
something of its strange lustre; and the old nurse
would feel so little anxiety, that her whole expression
and aspect would show the change, and
people would say to her, “Why, Sophy, how
young you're looking!”

As the spring came on, Elsie would leave the
fireside, have her tiger-skin spread in the empty
southern chamber next the wall, and lie there
basking for whole hours in the sunshine. As the
season warmed, the light would kindle afresh in
her eyes, and the old woman's sleep would grow
restless again, — for she knew, that, so long as the
glitter was fierce in the girl's eyes, there was no
trusting her impulses or movements.

At last, when the veins of the summer were hot
and swollen, and the juices of all the poison-plants
and the blood of all the creatures that feed upon
them had grown thick and strong, — about the
time when the second mowing was in hand, and

the brown, wet-faced men were following up the
scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass,
(falling as the waves fall on sickle-curved beaches;
the foam-flowers dropping as the grass-flowers
drop, — with sharp semivowel consonantal sounds,
— frsh, — for that is the way the sea talks, and
leaves all pure vowel-sounds for the winds to
breathe over it, and all mutes to the unyielding
earth,) — about this time of over-ripe midsummer,
the life of Elsie seemed fullest of its malign and
restless instincts. This was the period of the
year when the Rockland people were most cautious
of wandering in the leafier coverts which
skirted the base of The Mountain, and the farmers
liked to wear thick, long boots, whenever they
went into the bushes. But Elsie was never so
much given to roaming over The Mountain as
at this season; and as she had grown more absolute
and uncontrollable, she was as like to take
the night as the day for her rambles.

At this season, too, all her peculiar tastes in
dress and ornament came out in a more striking
way than at other times. She was never so
superb as then, and never so threatening in her
scowling beauty. The barred skirts she always
fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous
muslins; the diamonds often glittered on her
breast as if for her own pleasure rather than to
dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet hardly left
her arm. She was never seen without some
necklace, — either the golden cord she wore at the

great party, or a chain of mosaics, or simply a
ring of golden scales. Some said that Elsie always
slept in a necklace, and that when she died
she was to be buried in one. It was a fancy of
hers, — but many thought there was a reason for
it.

Nobody watched Elsie with a more searching
eye than her cousin, Dick Venner. He had kept
more out of her way of late, it is true, but there
was not a movement she made which he did not
carefully observe just so far as he could without
exciting her suspicion. It was plain enough to
him that the road to fortune was before him, and
that the first thing was to marry Elsie. What
course he should take with her, or with others
interested, after marrying her, need not be decided
in a hurry.

He had now done all he could expect to do at
present in the way of conciliating the other members
of the household. The girl's father tolerated
him, if he did not even like him. Whether he
suspected his project or not Dick did not feel
sure; but it was something to have got a foot-hold
in the house, and to have overcome any
prepossession against him which his uncle might
have entertained. To be a good listener and a
bad billiard-player was not a very great sacrifice
to effect this object. Then old Sophy could hardly
help feeling well-disposed towards him, after
the gifts he had bestowed on her and the court
he had payed her. These were the only persons

on the place of much importance to gain over.
The people employed about the house and farmlands
had little to do with Elsie, except to obey
her without questioning her commands.

Mr. Richard began to think of reopening his
second parallel. But he had lost something of
the coolness with which he had begun his system
of operations. The more he had reflected upon
the matter, the more he had convinced himself
that this was his one great chance in life. If he
suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity
could hardly, in the nature of things, present
itself a second time. Only one life between
Elsie and her fortune, — and lives are so uncertain!
The girl might not suit him as a wife.
Possibly. Time enough to find out after he had
got her. In short, he must have the property, and
Elsie Venner, as she was to go with it, — and then,
if he found it convenient and agreeable to lead a
virtuous life, he would settle down and raise children
and vegetables; but if he found it inconvenient
and disagreeable, so much the worse for
those who made it so. Like many other persons,
he was not principled against virtue, provided virtue
were a better investment than its opposite;
but he knew that there might be contingencies in
which the property would be better without its incumbrances,
and he contemplated this conceivable
problem in the light of all its possible solutions.

One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from
himself: Elsie had some new cause of indifference,

at least, if not of aversion to him. With
the acuteness which persons who make a sole
business of their own interest gain by practice, so
that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real
lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the
young man up at the school where the girl had
been going of late, as probably at the bottom of
it.

“Cousin Elsie in love!” so he communed with
himself upon his lonely pillow. “In love with a
Yankee school-master! What else can it be?
Let him look out for himself! He'll stand but
a bad chance between us. What makes you
think she's in love with him? Met her walking
with him. Don't like her looks and ways; —
she's thinking about something, anyhow. Where
does she get those books she is reading so often?
Not out of our library, that's certain. If I could
have ten minutes' peep into her chamber now, I
would find out where she got them, and what
mischief she was up to.”

At that instant, as if some tributary demon had
heard his wish, a shape which could be none but
Elsie's flitted through a gleam of moonlight into
the shadow of the trees. She was setting out on
one of her midnight rambles.

Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently
his cheeks flushed with the old longing for an
adventure. It was not much to invade a young
girl's deserted chamber, but it would amuse a
wakeful hour, and tell him some little matters he

wanted to know. The chamber he slept in was
over the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at
this season. There was no great risk of his being
seen or heard, if he ventured down-stairs to her
apartment.

Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting
project, arose and lighted a lamp. He
wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust
his feet into a pair of cloth slippers. He stole
carefully down the stair, and arrived safely at the
door of Elsie's room. The young lady had taken
the natural precaution to leave it fastened, carrying
the key with her, no doubt, — unless, indeed,
she had got out by the window, which was not
far from the ground. Dick could get in at this
window easily enough, but he did not like the
idea of leaving his footprints in the flower-bed
just under it. He returned to his own chamber,
and held a council of war with himself.

He put his head out of his own window and
looked at that beneath. It was open. He then
went to one of his trunks, which he unlocked, and
began carefully removing its contents. What
these were we need not stop to mention, — only
remarking that there were dresses of various patterns,
which might afford an agreeable series of
changes, and in certain contingencies prove eminently
useful. After removing a few of these, he
thrust his hand to the very bottom of the remaining
pile and drew out a coiled strip of leather
many yards in length, ending in a noose, — a

tough, well-seasoned lasso, looking as if it had
seen service and was none the worse for it. He
uncoiled a few yards of this and fastened it to the
knob of a door. Then he threw the loose end
out of the window so that it should hang by the
open casement of Elsie's room. By this he let
himself down opposite her window, and with a
slight effort swung himself inside the room. He
lighted a match, found a candle, and, having
lighted that, looked curiously about him, as Clodius
might have done when he smuggled himself
in among the Vestals.

Elsie's room was almost as peculiar as her
dress and ornaments. It was a kind of museum
of objects, such as the woods are full of to those
who have eyes to see them, but many of them
such as only few could hope to reach, even if
they knew where to look for them. Crows' nests,
which are never found but in the tall trees, commonly
enough in the forks of ancient hemlocks,
eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a quick
eye and a hard climb to find and get hold of,
mosses and ferns of unusual aspect, and quaint
monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as Nature
delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and
fancies like any naturalist or poet.

Nature, when left to her own freaks in the
forest, is grotesque and fanciful to the verge of
license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees does
not always require clipping to make it look like
an image of life. From those windows at Canoe

Meadow, among the mountains, we could see all
summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken,
and General Jackson on horseback, done by Nature
in green leaves, each with a single tree. But
to Nature's tricks with boughs and roots and
smaller vegetable growths there is no end. Her
fancy is infinite, and her humor not always refined.
There is a perpetual reminiscence of animal
life in her rude caricatures, which sometimes
actually reach the point of imitating the complete
human figure, as in that extraordinary specimen
which nobody will believe to be genuine, except
the men of science, and of which the discreet
reader may have a glimpse by application in the
proper quarter.

Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like
monstrosities, that one might have thought
she had robbed old Sophy's grandfather of his
fetishes. They helped to give her room a kind of
enchanted look, as if a witch had her home in it.
Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like branch,
strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines
which strain the smaller trees in their clinging
embraces, sinking into the bark until the parasite
becomes almost identified with its support. With
these sylvan curiosities were blended objects of
art, some of them not less singular, but others
showing a love for the beautiful in form and color,
such as a girl of fine organization and nice culture
might naturally be expected to feel and to
indulge, in adorning her apartment.

All these objects, pictures, bronzes, vases, and
the rest, did not detain Mr. Richard Venner very
long, whatever may have been his sensibilities to
art. He was more curious about books and papers.
A copy of Keats lay on the table. He
opened it and read the name of Bernard C.
Langdon on the blank leaf. An envelope was
on the table with Elsie's name written in a similar
hand; but the envelope was empty, and he
could not find the note it contained. Her desk
was locked, and it would not be safe to tamper
with it. He had seen enough; the girl received
books and notes from this fellow up at the school,
— this usher, this Yankee quill-driver; — he was
aspiring to become the lord of the Dudley domain,
then, was he?

Elsie had been reasonably careful. She had
locked up her papers, whatever they might be.
There was little else that promised to reward his
curiosity, but he cast his eye on everything.
There was a clasp-Bible among her books. Dick
wondered if she ever unclasped it. There was
a book of hymns; it had her name in it, and
looked as if it might have been often read; —
what the diablo had Elsie to do with hymns?

Mr. Richard Venner was in an observing and
analytical state of mind, it will be noticed, or he
might perhaps have been touched with the innocent
betrayals of the poor girl's chamber. Had
she, after all, some human tenderness in her
heart? That was not the way he put the question,

— but whether she would take seriously to
this schoolmaster, and if she did, what would be
the neatest and surest and quickest way of putting
a stop to all that nonsense. All this, however,
he could think over more safely in his own
quarters. So he stole softly to the window, and,
catching the end of the leathern thong, regained
his own chamber and drew in the lasso.

It needs only a little jealousy to set a man on
who is doubtful in love or wooing, or to make
him take hold of his courting in earnest. As
soon as Dick had satisfied himself that the young
schoolmaster was his rival in Elsie's good graces,
his whole thoughts concentrated themselves more
than ever on accomplishing his great design of
securing her for himself. There was no time to
be lost. He must come into closer relations with
her, so as to withdraw her thoughts from this fellow,
and to find out more exactly what was the
state of her affections, if she had any. So he
began to court her company again, to propose
riding with her, to sing to her, to join her whenever
she was strolling about the grounds, to make
himself agreeable, according to the ordinary understanding
of that phrase, in every way which
seemed to promise a chance for succeeding in
that amiable effort.

The girl treated him more capriciously than
ever. She would be sullen and silent, or she
would draw back fiercely at some harmless word
or gesture, or she would look at him with her

eyes narrowed in such a strange way and with
such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to
himself they were too much for him, and would
leave her for the moment. Yet she tolerated him,
almost as a matter of necessity, and sometimes
seemed to take a kind of pleasure in trying her
power upon him. This he soon found out, and
humored her in the fancy that she could exercise
a kind of fascination over him, — though there
were times in which he actually felt an influence
he could not understand, an effect of some peculiar
expression about her, perhaps, but still centring
in those diamond eyes of hers which it
made one feel so curiously to look into.

Whether Elsie saw into his object or not was
more than he could tell. His idea was, after
having conciliated the good-will of all about her
as far as possible, to make himself first a habit
and then a necessity with the girl, — not to spring
any trap of a declaration upon her until tolerance
had grown into such a degree of inclination as
her nature was like to admit. He had succeeded
in the first part of his plan. He was at liberty to
prolong his visit at his own pleasure. This was
not strange; these three persons, Dudley Venner,
his daughter, and his nephew, represented all that
remained of an old and honorable family. Had
Elsie been like other girls, her father might have
been less willing to entertain a young fellow like
Dick as an inmate; but he had long outgrown all
the slighter apprehensions which he might have

had in common with all parents, and followed
rather than led the imperious instincts of his
daughter. It was not a question of sentiment,
but of life and death, or more than that, — some
dark ending, perhaps, which would close the history
of his race with disaster and evil report upon
the lips of all coming generations.

As to the thought of his nephew's making love
to his daughter, it had almost passed from his
mind. He had been so long in the habit of looking
at Elsie as outside of all common influences
and exceptional in the law of her nature, that it
was difficult for him to think of her as a girl to
be fallen in love with. Many persons are surprised,
when others court their female relatives;
they know them as good young or old women
enough, — aunts, sisters, nieces, daughters, whatever
they may be, — but never think of anybody's
falling in love with them, any more than of their
being struck by lightning. But in this case there
were special reasons, in addition to the common
family delusion, — reasons which seemed to make
it impossible that she should attract a suitor.
Who would dare to marry Elsie? No, let her
have the pleasure, if it was one, at any rate the
wholesome excitement, of companionship; it
might save her from lapsing into melancholy or
a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had
a kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could
only outlive three septenaries, twenty-one years,
so that, according to the prevalent idea, her whole

frame would have been thrice made over, counting
from her birth, she would revert to the natural
standard of health of mind and feelings from
which she had been so long perverted. The
thought of any other motive than love being
sufficient to induce Richard to become her suitor
had not occurred to him. He had married early,
at that happy period when interested motives are
least apt to influence the choice; and his single
idea of marriage was, that it was the union of
persons naturally drawn towards each other by
some mutual attraction. Very simple, perhaps;
but he had lived lonely for many years since his
wife's death, and judged the hearts of others,
most of all of his brother's son, by his own. He
had often thought whether, in case of Elsie's dying
or being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he
might not adopt this nephew and make him his
heir; but it had not occurred to him that Richard
might wish to become his son-in-law for the sake
of his property.

It is very easy to criticise other people's modes
of dealing with their children. Outside observers
see results; parents see processes. They notice
the trivial movements and accents which betray
the blood of this or that ancestor; they can detect
the irrepressible movement of hereditary impulse
in looks and acts which mean nothing to
the common observer. To be a parent is almost
to be a fatalist. This boy sits with legs crossed,
just as his uncle used to whom he never saw;

his grandfathers both died before he was born,
but he has the movement of the eyebrows which
we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper
of the other.

These are things parents can see, and which
they must take account of in education, but
which few except parents can be expected to
really understand. Here and there a sagacious
person, old, or of middle age, who has triangulated
a race, that is, taken three or more observations
from the several standing-places of three
different generations, can tell pretty nearly the
range of possibilities and the limitations of a
child, actual or potential, of a given stock, —
errors excepted always, because children of the
same stock are not bred just alike, because the
traits of some less known ancestor are liable to
break out at any time, and because each human
being has, after all, a small fraction of individuality
about him which gives him a flavor, so that
he is distinguishable from others by his friends
or in a court of justice, and which occasionally
makes a genius or a saint or a criminal of him.
It is well that young persons cannot read these
fatal oracles of Nature. Blind impulse is her
highest wisdom, after all. We make our great
jump, and then she takes the bandage off our
eyes. That is the way the broad sea-level of
average is maintained, and the physiological
democracy is enabled to fight against the principle
of selection which would disinherit all the

weaker children. The magnificent constituency
of mediocrities of which the world is made up,
— the people without biographies, whose lives
have made a clear solution in the fluid menstruum
of time, instead of being precipitated in
the opaque sediment of history —

But this is a narrative, and not a disquisition.