University of Virginia Library

12. XII.
A NEW ENGAGEMENT.

TEN days later Philip came into Aunt
Jane's parlor, looking excited and gloomy,
with a letter in his hand. He put it down on
her table without its envelope, — a thing that
always particularly annoyed her. A letter
without its envelope, she was wont to say,
was like a man without a face, or a key without
a string, — something incomplete, preposterous.
As usual, however, he strode across
her prejudices, and said, “I have something to
tell you. It is a fact.”

“Is it?” said Aunt Jane, curtly. “That is
refreshing in these times.”

“A good beginning,” said Kate. “Go on.
You have prepared us for something incredible.”

“You will think it so,” said Malbone.
“Emilia is engaged to Mr. John Lambert.”
And he went out of the room.

“Good Heavens!” said Aunt Jane, taking
off her spectacles. “What a man! He is

ugly enough to frighten the neighboring
crows. His face looks as if it had fallen
together out of chaos, and the features had
come where it had pleased Fate. There is a
look of industrious nothingness about him,
such as busy dogs have. I know the whole
family. They used to bake our bread.”

“I suppose they are good and sensible,”
said Kate.

“Like boiled potatoes, my dear,” was the
response, — “wholesome but perfectly uninteresting.”

“Is he of that sort?” asked Kate.

“No,” said her aunt; “not uninteresting,
but ungracious. But I like an ungracious man
better than one like Philip, who hangs over
young girls like a soft-hearted avalanche. This
Lambert will govern Emilia, which is what
she needs.”

“She will never love him,” said Kate,
“which is the one thing she needs. There
is nothing that could not be done with Emilia
by any person with whom she was in love;
and nothing can ever be done with her by
anybody else. No good will ever come of
this, and I hope she will never marry him.”

With this unusual burst, Kate retreated to

Hope. Hope took the news more patiently
than any one, but with deep solicitude. A
worldly marriage seemed the natural result
of the Ingleside influence, but it had not occurred
to anybody that it would come so soon.
It had not seemed Emilia's peculiar temptation;
and yet nobody could suppose that she
looked at John Lambert through any glamour
of the affections.

Mr. John Lambert was a millionnaire, a
politician, and a widower. The late Mrs.
Lambert had been a specimen of that cheerful
hopelessness of temperament that one finds
abundantly developed among the middle-aged
women of country towns. She enjoyed her
daily murders in the newspapers, and wept
profusely at the funerals of strangers. On
every occasion, however felicitous, she offered
her condolences in a feeble voice, that seemed
to have been washed a great many times and
to have faded. But she was a good manager,
a devoted wife, and was more cheerful at home
than elsewhere, for she had there plenty of
trials to exercise her eloquence, and not enough
joy to make it her duty to be doleful. At last
her poor, meek, fatiguing voice faded out altogether,
and her husband mourned her as

heartily as she would have bemoaned the
demise of the most insignificant neighbor.
After her death, being left childless, he had
nothing to do but to make money, and he
naturally made it. Having taken his primary
financial education in New England, he graduated
at that great business university, Chicago,
and then entered on the public practice
of wealth in New York.

Aunt Jane had perhaps done injustice to
the personal appearance of Mr. John Lambert.
His features were irregular, but not insignificant,
and there was a certain air of slow
command about him, which made some persons
call him handsome. He was heavily
built, with a large, well-shaped head, light
whiskers tinged with gray, and a sort of dusty
complexion. His face was full of little curved
wrinkles, as if it were a slate just ruled for
sums in long division, and his small blue eyes
winked anxiously a dozen different ways, as
if they were doing the sums. He seemed to
bristle with memorandum-books, and kept
drawing them from every pocket, to put
something down. He was slow of speech,
and his very heaviness of look added to the
impression of reserved power about the man.

All his career in life had been a solid progress,
and his boldest speculations seemed securer
than the legitimate business of less potent
financiers. Beginning business life by peddling
gingerbread on a railway train, he had
developed such a genius for railway management
as some men show for chess or for virtue;
and his accumulating property had the
momentum of a planet.

He had read a good deal at odd times, and
had seen a great deal of men. His private
morals were unstained, he was equable and
amiable, had strong good sense, and never got
beyond his depth. He had travelled in Europe
and brought home many statistics, some
new thoughts, and a few good pictures selected
by his friends. He spent his money liberally
for the things needful to his position,
owned a yacht, bred trotting-horses, and had
founded a theological school.

He submitted to these and other social observances
from a vague sense of duty as an
American citizen; his real interest lay in
business and in politics. Yet he conducted
these two vocations on principles diametrically
opposite. In business he was more honest
than the average; in politics he had no conception

of honesty, for he could see no difference
between a politician and any other merchandise.
He always succeeded in business,
for he thoroughly understood its principles;
in politics he always failed in the end, for he
recognized no principles at all. In business
he was active, resolute, and seldom deceived;
in politics he was equally active, but was apt
to be irresolute, and was deceived every day
of his life. In both cases it was not so much
from love of power that he labored, as from
the excitement of the game. The larger the
scale the better he liked it; a large railroad
operation, a large tract of real estate, a big
and noisy statesman, — these investments he
found irresistible.

On which of his two sets of principles he
would manage a wife remained to be proved.
It is the misfortune of what are called self-made
men in America, that, though early accustomed
to the society of men of the world,
they often remain utterly unacquainted with
women of the world, until those charming
perils are at last sprung upon them in full
force, at New York or Washington. John
Lambert at forty was as absolutely ignorant
of the qualities and habits of a cultivated

woman as of the details of her toilet. The
plain domesticity of his departed wife he had
understood and prized; he remembered her
household ways as he did her black alpaca
dress; indeed, except for that item of apparel,
she was not so unlike himself. In later years
he had seen the women of society; he had
heard them talk; he had heard men talk about
them, wittily or wickedly, at the clubs; he
had perceived that a good many of them
wished to marry him, and yet, after all, he
knew no more of them than of the rearing of
humming-birds of orchids, — dainty, tropical
things which he allowed his gardener to raise,
he keeping his hands off, and only paying the
bills. Whether there was in existence a class
of women who were both useful and refined,
— any intermediate type between the butterfly
and the drudge, — was a question which
he had sometimes asked himself, without having
the materials to construct a reply.

With imagination thus touched and heart
unfilled, this man had been bewitched from
the very first moment by Emilia. He kept it
to himself, and heard in silence the criticisms
made at the club-windows. To those perpetual
jokes about marriage, which are showered

with such graceful courtesy about the path
of widowers, he had no reply; or at most
would only admit that he needed some elegant
woman to preside over his establishment,
and that he had better take her young, as having
habits less fixed. But in his secret soul
he treasured every tone of this girl's voice,
every glance of her eye, and would have kept
in a casket of gold and diamonds the little
fragrant glove she once let fall. He envied
the penniless and brainless boys, who, with
ready gallantry, pushed by him to escort her
to her carriage; and he lay awake at night to
form into words the answer he ought to have
made, when she threw at him some careless
phrase, and gave him the opportunity to blunder.

And she, meanwhile, unconscious of his passion,
went by him in her beauty, and caught
him in the net she never threw. Emilia
was always piquant, because she was indifferent;
she had never made an effort in her
life, and she had no respect for persons. She
was capable of marrying for money, perhaps,
but the sacrifice must all be completed in a
single vow. She would not tutor nor control
herself for the purpose. Hand and heart

must be duly transferred, she supposed, whenever
the time was up; but till then she must
be free.

This with her was not art, but necessity;
yet the most accomplished art could have
devised nothing so effectual to hold her lover.
His strong sense had always protected him
from the tricks of matchmaking mammas and
their guileless maids. Had Emilia made one
effort to please him, once concealed a dislike,
once affected a preference, the spell might
have been broken. Had she been his slave,
he might have become a very unyielding
or a very heedless despot. Making him her
slave, she kept him at the very height of bliss.
This king of railways and purchaser of statesmen,
this man who made or wrecked the fortunes
of others by his whim, was absolutely
governed by a reckless, passionate, inexperienced,
ignorant girl.

And this passion was made all the stronger
by being a good deal confined to his own
breast. Somehow it was very hard for him to
talk sentiment to Emilia; he instinctively
saw she disliked it, and indeed he liked her
for not approving the stiff phrases which were
all he could command. Nor could he find

any relief of mind in talking with others
about her. It enraged him to be clapped on
the back and congratulated by his compeers;
and he stopped their coarse jokes, often rudely
enough. As for the young men at the club,
he could not bear to hear them mention his
darling's name, however courteously. He
knew well enough that for them the betrothal
had neither dignity nor purity; that
they held it to be as much a matter of bargain
and sale as their worst amours. He
would far rather have talked to the theological
professors whose salaries he paid, for he
saw that they had a sort of grave, formal tradition
of the sacredness of marriage. And he
had a right to claim that to him it was sacred,
at least as yet; all the ideal side of his nature
was suddenly developed; he walked in a
dream; he even read Tennyson.

Sometimes he talked a little to his future
brother-in-law, Harry, — assuming, as lovers
are wont, that brothers see sisters on their
ideal side. This was quite true of Harry and
Hope, but not at all true as regarded Emilia.
She seemed to him simply a beautiful and ungoverned
girl whom he could not respect, and
whom he therefore found it very hard to idealize.

Therefore he heard with a sort of sadness
the outpourings of generous devotion from
John Lambert.

“I don't know how it is, Henry,” the merchant
would gravely say, “I can't get rightly
used to it, that I feel so strange. Honestly,
now, I feel as if I was beginning life over
again. It ain't a selfish feeling, so I know
there's some good in it. I used to be selfish
enough, but I ain't so to her. You may not
think it, but if it would make her happy, I believe
I could lie down and let her carriage roll
over me. By —, I would build her a palace
to live in, and keep the lodge at the gate myself,
just to see her pass by. That is, if she was
to live in it alone by herself. I could n't stand
sharing her. It must be me or nobody.”

Probably there was no male acquaintance
of the parties, however hardened, to whom
these fine flights would have seemed more
utterly preposterous than to the immediate
friend and prospective bridesmaid, Miss
Blanche Ingleside. To that young lady,
trained sedulously by a devoted mother, life
was really a serious thing. It meant the full
rigor of the marriage market, tempered only
by dancing and new dresses. There was a

stern sense of duty beneath all her robing and
disrobing; she conscientiously did what was
expected of her, and took her little amusements
meanwhile. It was supposed that most
of the purchasers in the market preferred slang
and bare shoulders, and so she favored them
with plenty of both. It was merely the law
of supply and demand. Had John Lambert
once hinted that he would accept her in decent
black, she would have gone to the next
ball as a Sister of Charity; but where was
the need of it, when she and her mother both
knew that, had she appeared as the Veiled
Prophet of Khorassan, she would not have
won him? So her only resource was a cheerful
acquiescence in Emilia's luck, and a judicious
propitiation of the accepted favorite.

“I would n't mind playing Virtue Rewarded
myself, young woman,” said Blanche, “at such
a scale of prices. I would do it even to so
slow an audience as old Lambert. But you
see, it is n't my line. Don't forget your humble
friends when you come into your property,
that's all.” Then the tender coterie of innocents
entered on some preliminary consideration
of wedding-dresses.

When Emilia came home, she dismissed the

whole matter lightly as a settled thing, evaded
all talk with Aunt Jane, and coolly said
to Kate that she had no objection to Mr. Lambert,
and might as well marry him as anybody
else.

“I am not like you and Hal, you know,”
said she. “I have no fancy for love in a cottage.
I never look well in anything that is
not costly. I have not a taste that does not
imply a fortune. What is the use of love?
One marries for love, and is unhappy ever
after. One marries for money, and perhaps
gets love after all. I dare say Mr. Lambert
loves me, though I do not see why he should.”

“I fear he does,” said Kate, almost severely.

“Fear?” said Emilia.

“Yes,” said Kate. “It is an unequal bargain,
where one side does all the loving.”

“Don't be troubled,” said Emilia. “I dare
say he will not love me long. Nobody ever
did!” And her eyes filled with tears which
she dashed away angrily, as she ran up to her
room.

It was harder yet for her to talk with Hope,
but she did it, and that in a very serious mood.
She had never been so open with her sister.

“Aunt Jane once told me,” she said, “that

my only safety was in marrying a good man.
Now I am engaged to one.”

“Do you love him, Emilia?” asked Hope,
gravely.

“Not much,” said Emilia, honestly. “But
perhaps I shall, by and by.”

“Emilia,” cried Hope, “there is no such
thing as happiness in a marriage without
love.”

“Mine is not without love,” the girl answered.
“He loves me. It frightens me to
see how much he loves me. I can have the
devotion of a lifetime, if I will. Perhaps it is
hard to receive it in such a way, but I can
have it. Do you blame me very much?”

Hope hesitated. “I cannot blame you so
much, my child,” she said, “as if I thought
it were money for which you cared. It seems
to me that there must be something beside
that, and yet —”

“O Hope, how I thank you,” interrupted
Emilia. “It is not money. You know I do
not care about money, except just to buy my
clothes and things. At least, I do not care
about so much as he has, — more than a million
dollars, only think! Perhaps they said
two million. Is it wrong for me to marry him,
just because he has that?”

“Not if you love him.”

“I do not exactly love him, but O Hope, I
cannot tell you about it. I am not so frivolous
as you think. I want to do my duty. I
want to make you happy too: you have been
so sweet to me.”

“Did you think it would make me happy to
have you married?” asked Hope, surprised,
and kissing again and again the young, sad
face. And the two girls went upstairs together
brought for the moment into more
sisterly nearness by the very thing that had
seemed likely to set them forever apart.