University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

In-doors or out of doors? Which way shall we look? Without,
the cassique is busy with the workmen. You hear the griding
of the saw, the clink of the hammer, the heavy, dull stroke of
the axe. And every sound declares for life — the life of civilization
usurping the domain of the savage.

Within! Ah, within! Is it life here? It is the peculiar province
of the woman. And why not life, even though there be no
strife, no bustle? Life asserts itself no less sensibly and keenly
through pain and silent suffering than through the clamorous
voices that speak for human performance.

Wealth is here, no doubt. But the realm is a simple one. All
the appliances and appurtenances are rude. Compared with the
European houses of our settlers, the contrast is almost ludicrous.
Log-houses — squared logs, it is true — a great waste of timber —
massive enough — looking like rude castles — show, nevertheless,
but uncouthly in European eyes, reared as our cassique and his
family have been, in the grand old homes of England. And this
central fabric, which is designed to be especially well finished —
in which our Carolina nobleman means that his family shall dwell
— what is it but a plain structure of pine and cypress? Large
enough, certainly — four rooms on a floor; a great hall of reception,

thirty by twenty-four; dining-room, of the same dimensions;
a grand passage through the centre; a parlor for the ladies, somewhat
smaller than hall and dining-room; and a library opposite!
Chambers above, in a second story; wings contemplated, giving
other chambers. Well, yes, from a distance, you will say this is
a stately mansion, of good dimensions for comfort; and, if you
have seen none but the American world, it will be a big fabric,
rather grand of size and ample of accommodation, and supposed
to represent very superior wealth.

The enclosure which is staked off, partly fenced — picketed,
rather — confirms this idea. And there is wealth, the standards
of the country only considered; and our cassique has prepared to
lodge his family well, with equal dignity and comfort. We are
to suppose a certain portion of the dwelling-house to be habitable,
if not finished. Some of the rooms are lined and panelled with
cypress-plank; the chimneys are all built; the furniture is there,
all fresh from England, of a rich, massy character — hardly in
keeping, however, with the otherwise naked simplicity of the
dwelling. Clearly, the dwellers here have need to congratulate
themselves that their lot has fallen upon pleasant places.

But, are they happy?

Even this question may be thought an impertinent one. We
are of those who think that we have got very little to do with
happiness. We have a certain destiny to fulfil, certain duties to
perform, certain laws to obey, and vicissitudes to encounter, with
such resources of courage as we have — energy, industry, and patient
submission, with working; and, these laws complied with,
we are to trouble ourselves no further about the compensative in
our lot. This is a matter which must be left to God. He will
settle our accounts, and make his award; and, whether this be
happiness or suffering, is not a concern of ours, though it makes a
wonderful difference in the degree in which we may relish life.

Indeed, so certainly is all this true, that our instincts all recognise
it; and though we are told that the pursuit of happiness, in
our own way, is an inalienable right, yet nobody actually proposes
it to himself, at any time, as the object of his endeavor. Men do
not deliberately seek happiness at any time. They seek money,
seek power, seek indulgence, the gratification of one passion or
another; but no one proposes to himself any scheme by which he

contemplates the realization of Eden or Aready. We all aim at
very inferior objects, and perhaps rightly.

And how should we pursue an object, in the possession of
which we have no guaranty? Can there be any happiness in ill
health, in perpetual toil and anxiety, under the caprice of fortune;
the caprice of wind and weather; the knowledge that the most
precious hopes and affections lie everywhere, at every moment,
exposed to the spoiler — to death, disease, loss, pain, denial, defeat
— those hungry wolves that prey upon humanity — those mocking
phantoms that delude it to despair!

No! we have nothing to do with happiness. He who pursues
it pursues a phantom. He who finds it becomes a coward, perpetually
dreading death and disaster. A certain object — lawful,
proper to our sympathies, natural to our condition, our strength,
and resources — this is what we may and should reasonably pursue;
and this is attainable by all those who bring honest purpose,
and judicious aim, and manly working, to bear upon the object of
desire. Even Love must be moderate in its aims, and we must
not expect too much from marriage. Men are not heroes all, nor
women angels; and if the parties will only bear themselves toward
each other like honest men and women; be faithful and fond, with
reasonable expectations of care and reverence, honor and respect;
gentle solicitude on the one hand and manly protection on the
other — we shall perhaps find it a goodly, comfortable world
enough: nor need we then trouble ourselves about the ideal condition
which we figure under the word “happiness.” The vulgar
mortal finds this to resolve itself into mutton one day, and roast
beef and plum-pudding another; in the exhibition of new toggery
and trinkets; or, as Zulieme Calvert was apt to do, in the fanciful
twirling of very flexible limbs to the inspiriting entreaties of tambourine
and fiddle!

But were our cassique and his women-folk as happy as they
might be, in the circumstances of their condition, and under the
qualifying definitions of happiness which we have given?

That is the question!

Well, you have heard of the cassique, and what people think
of him. You have seen him already in one brief interview. Look
at him now, among yonder workmen. We show him to you a
week in advance of Calvert's visit. See the energy with which

he throws himself into labor: see the frightful intensity with which
he concentrates will, and thought, and muscle, upon the tasks before
him; watch the eager impulse, the stirring mind, the restless
impatience; hear the sharp, stern voice of authority, angry because
dull labor is slow to comprehend, and a sullen mood stubbornly
resists instruction. Note him, as he hurries to and fro —
now on foot, now mounted — hurrying this way, straining that;
and now busy with the builders, now with the hewers; and anon
with the ploughmen, as they drive their shares through the newly-cleared
lands — striving, by dint of extra exertion, to repair the
loss of previous time — the business of “breaking up” having been
begun rather late in the season. And now observe him, as, in a
state of physical exhaustion, he flings himself down upon the naked
earth, trying to rest the animal man, while the mental, with
keen eye and impatient thought, chafes at the demands of the
poor body for needful hours of repose!

“Well,” you will be apt to say, “at least this man's nature is
satisfied. He is working in his vocation, con amore; he is one
of those men who can not help but work — who derives his enjoyments
from his employments — the greatest mortal secret.” And,
to a certain degree, you will resolve correctly.

But, follow him now, as he starts up and passes into the dwelling.
Note his countenance as he enters the house. See how it
alters in aspect. You have seen it wear, just now, a variety of
changes in a brief space of time. There was authority asserting
itself; there was thought engaged in a problem; there was eager
zeal growing angry at some vulgar retardation; there were qualities
of mind and temperament, all declaring themselves by sudden
and startling transitions.

But these disappear the moment he penetrates the dwelling.
We now see that a sudden cloud has passed over his brow, which
declares for some deeper working of the more secret nature.
There is sadness as well as solemnity in that cloud. There is a
gloomy shadow upon that spirit which the intellect does not offer
to disperse. It is a settled expression of anxiety, verging on apprehension,
for which the mind prepares no medicine.

And you note that, when out of doors, and in contact with his
workmen, his carriage was rapid, eager, and without that reserve,
that staid dignity and measured movement, which vain men usually

maintain when dealing with the vulgar; yet, the moment he
approaches his dwelling, his movements become slow, his carriage
more erect; he seems to brace himself, with effort, as for an encounter.
He has put on his armor of pride and dignity as if for
the meeting with a foe.

Can this be the case? And what are the relations of this lord
with his family?

Let us look within. Let us see how these women carry themselves,
ere the cassique appears. There is a tell-tale look or
action, a tone, a word, which, where there is a lurking sorrow,
will declare something of the secret; and women are better tell-tales
of the heart than men.

They occupy, mother and daughter, the parlor in the rear of
the dining-room, which has been assigned especially to their use.

The Honorable Mrs. Constance Masterton is about fifty years
of age, and, though carefully dressed, is not remarkably well preserved.
She may have been a pretty woman in her youth. She
has few traces of beauty now. The skin is sallow and wrinkled, the
cheeks sunken; she is lean and tall, and, but for a piercing black
eye, still full of fire, keen and searching, the sharpness and severity
of her visage and the turbid yellow of her skin would make her
absolutely revolting.

She is a woman of dignity. She is stately in her air and manner,
and, as we have said, studious of her dress. She carries
herself haughtily. She has a hard, hard heart; her training
has been that of a convention which gave the heart no chance;
her manners have all been formed artificially. She knows no nature
inconsistent with the rules of her circle. She has had no
life but that of society. She was one of those ridiculous people
who claim always to be “in society” — to be “the society” — and
who affect to despise all other classes — who do not, in fact, acknowledge
any other as in existence. She believes only in her
own “charmed circle” — one which the natural man would never
esteem a charming one. Books are not among her objects. She
never read one in her life. Music she recognises only as essential
to the proprieties of the household, even as cushions and sofa
are regarded as a material part of the furniture. She knows
no more of music than a mule. Her tastes were limited to costume
simply, and this was prescribed by a French artiste. Such

was she in her English home. There, she was poor withal, in
spite of all this social pretension; and in that melancholy situation
in which the social vanity is ever at a painful conflict with the
conventional necessity. She was a schemer, accordingly; and
never did poor demagogue, with large appetite and small wits, labor,
with more vulgar agents of trickery, for office, than did she
to maintain the social position from which poverty had compelled
her to descend. In the exercise of this faculty, she had shown
herself sufficiently dexterous. She had shuffled off a younger
son with nothing, and contrived to secure the elder, with a fortune,
for her eldest daughter. She had large practical wisdom; was a
woman of shrewdest policy.

And that daughter? — Olive Berkeley!

As a general rule, dear reader, we should expect the children
to inherit the aspect, the habits, tastes, and characteristics, of those
from whom they descend — those, at least, by whom they were
trained and educated. But the contradictions between children
and parents sometimes confound us. We might reconcile them,
possibly, were we in possession of all the facts. But, in the present
case, one portion of our criteria escapes us. Olive Masterton
had a father, but of him we know nothing. Was she like him?
Perhaps! She was certainly very unlike her mother.

But her mother had educated her, and the poet tells us —

Another, more certainly inspired, says: “Train up a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
And so, too, we may say, generally, of those who are trained up
in the way in which they should not go. But there are cases —
individual and rare exceptions, we admit — in which Nature shows
herself paramount to all other influences, whether of training, or
tyranny, or simple education. We suspect that Olive Masterton
was one of this description. Nature certainly had done not a
little to neutralize the misteachings of the mother.

Physically, the daughter was quite unlike her mother. She
was tall, it is true, but in this respect father and mother may have
been alike. In all other respects, they had little in common.
The mother was a brunette — dark of complexion and of eye.
And, though called “Olive” — why we know not — the daughter

was a blonde, perfectly fair, of transparent skin; light, lively blue
eye; and the most delicate auburn hair, that floated wild, in free
ringlets, over head and bosom. She was, as is natural to this
temperament, inclined to be full and plump; but there were good
reasons why she was not so at the date of our history. Something
of care and thought, of anxiety and disappointment — the heart,
briefly, had been at conflict with the temperament; and she is
now thin, pale — very pale — and spiritless. The change had
been very great in eighteen months. Before that time, there had
been few creatures of the same class who could be described as
more perfectly beautiful — more round, and plump, and fair, bright,
and blessing, and elastic — a thing of joy and beauty. There
were certainly fewer still whom we can conceive more loving or
loveable in character. Gentle, generous, ingenuous — frank and
impulsive — graceful and accomplished — fair and beautiful —
Olive Masterton was as unpresuming as if she had not a single
one of these excellences — as if her mother had never taught her
one lesson of her own. Convention, and her proud, ridiculous
mother, had equally failed to spoil the liberal handiwork of Nature,
however much they may have succeeded in perverting it
from its sweet and proper destination. Olive was one of those
who could and did pass through the infected district with a talismanic
power, carrying away no single taint upon her pure, white
garments.

But you see that something has gone wrong with Olive. She
is a wife and a mother — young wife, younger mother — yet, as
you see her there before you, not eighteen months a wife, you
doubt if she be a bride; you do not doubt that she is not, in any
sense, a happy one!

She sits at the tambour-frame — at one of those pretty, trifling,
slight sorts of work, so grateful to the feminine nature, so graceful
in feminine fingers, which, under a pretext of employment, affords
opportunity for reveries — which may, or may not, be pleasant!
She seems unconscious of her occupation. Her eyes are half-closed;
her whole air is listless and indifferent; it is very evident
that her thought is far away, and not satisfied with what it finds
in its wanderings. Her face is not merely pale — it is marked
by a deadly marble whiteness; her cheek is colorless; her form
thin to leanness. When she looks up, at the voice of her mother

her large blue eyes dilate with a vacancy of gaze which pains you
to behold. Young wife, young mother, but with no young heart,
or hope, or fancy. Her glance tells you, if not her cheek, that
she has survived all those sweet treasures of her youth.

Her mother watches her with an eager, sharp, dissatisfied sort
of interest. She, too, is engaged in needlework; but she lays it
down frequently in her lap, and fixes her eyes upon her daughter.
Her tall, spare figure, sitting erect in the old Elizabethan chair
of massive mahogany, is a good study of pride, antiquity, and self-complacency,
assured dignity and satisfied importance. In some
respects she is not entirely assured. She is no longer the ruler
of her daughter, though she still maintains the natural ascendency
of a mother; but she has a fancy that, were hers the only authority,
she could very soon cure Olive of that brooding melancholy,
of which she begins to be exceedingly distrustful. The attempts
which she makes to this end are of a kind rather to annoy than
to relieve the mind of the sufferer. How should she — the vain,
weak, ridiculous old creature —

Alas! like too many of our poor, vain family of man, she can
better make sick than well; more certainly pain than cure; rather
poison than find the antidote: and, so far as her callous conscience
works, that old woman begins to doubt whether she has not done
this very thing! It is surely some cruel poison which has made
that young creature, once so happy, now so perfectly “a creature
of the wo that never moans; dies, but complains not!”

“Olive, my child, is there to be no end of this?” said the mother,
rising and approaching the daughter. The tones were reproachful,
not conciliatory.

“What is it you wish, mother?” answered the young wife, hardly
conscious of the question, and looking up with eyes of great humility;
that is, if the utter absence of all animation can be well
signified by such a word.

“What do I wish? I wish you to shake off these melancholy
humors; to be yourself, my child; as you were of old, when your
spirits were gay as any bird's, and your face as smiling as any
sunshine.”

“Ah! mother, if 't were as easy to do as to wish—”

“And why not? 'T would be quite easy, if you 'd only try —
only make an effort.”

“And why should I make an effort, mother?”

“Why? Why have you not everything in the world to persuade
you? There 's your child — your husband—”

“No more, mother, I implore you! All this pains me — does
no good.”

“But there must be more, Olive. You owe it to the cassique
to wear a more smiling, a more pleasant, a more grateful aspect.
What has he not done for you? what is he not doing? Here you
have every prospect of a beautiful, a splendid home—”

“Would to God, mother, that he had left us to the enjoyment
of our poor cottage and our simplicity!”

“Indeed! In other words, to poverty and obscurity—”

“Welcome obscurity!”

“And I say, `No,' my child; and I shall ever congratulate myself
that you had the wisdom to choose so wisely as you did.”

“I choose!”

“Surely, you chose!”

“No, mother, spare me that accusation. It was your choice,
none of mine; and my hourly thought is one of the deepest self-reproach
that I was submissive when I should have been resolved;
weak — oh, most pitiably weak — where I should have been strong!
But, please you, say no more of this. You have done your work,
irrevocably done it, and I am — what I am! Is it not enough
that I have submitted to your will?”

“My wish, my child, not any will of mine. Your own will, you
know—”

“It matters nothing now.”

“But, my dear, it matters everything. Do you suppose it pleasant
to the cassique, who is doing everything for us, that you should
meet him with such lack-lustre eyes always, such pallid cheeks,
such a spiritless air, such a wobegone countenance?”

“Can I help it, mother?”

“To be sure you can, if you will try. It only needs that you
pluck up resolution.”

“I do — to keep from drowning! I should sink quite, but that
I do try, and pluck up a sort of resolution. But I can do no more.
I do this only because I would, if it were possible for me, make
my husband happy. I do not reproach him.”

“You reproach me, then — me!”

The young wife was silent. The mother confronted her.

“Yes, Olive, you reproach me; and that is, I say it, the height
of ingratitude! You reproach me because I saved you from the
embraces of a beggar—”

“Mother you promised me!—”

“Yes, I did promise you never again to speak of that poverty-stricken
reprobate; but you also promised me that you would try
to show yourself grateful for the blessings—”

“Blessings! Ah, mother, do I not seem to enjoy them?”

“It 's your own fault if you do not. Here 's plenty; here 's
wealth; here 's servants, any number. Is it money you would
have — dress, luxury, splendor? You may have them all.”

“All for peace, mother! I would give all for peace — for
sleep.”

“And whose fault is it that you have not peace? What's to
trouble you? You have nothing to apprehend. You have only
to will, and have — command, and be obeyed; and, I do say it,
your husband is one of the best of men.”

“He is, and that is enough to rob me of peace! — that he deserves
so much, and I can give so little — nothing, in fact, of what
he deserves and desires most.”

“You do n't try, Olive! You prefer to sit, and mope, and
weep, when your duty is to stir about, and be cheerful and smiling.
Trying will do it — only try!”

“I have tried. Oh, do not ask me for further effort!”

“Olive, it 's all perversity! And when I consider the poverty
out of which he brought us; the plenty which we now enjoy; the
dignity to which he has raised you—”

“Oh, mocks, mocks, mocks! — mocks all, and frauds, mother —
where the poor heart sits naked and disconsolate in the solitude,
scorning the pomp which is wasted upon the wasting frame.
Mother, no more of this. You only make it worse!”

“Make it worse? As if I did not know what was best for my
own child!”

The daughter shook her head mournfully, but said nothing.
How much might she not have said upon the theme? The mother
was not so forbearing.

“Yes,” she continued, “I ought to know, who 've reared you from
the cradle. I say it 's mere perversity that makes you go on so;
makes you prefer to be miserable when you might be so happy.”

“Strange perversity indeed, mother, preferring misery to happiness!
Have you found it so easy to procure happiness?”

“That 's nothing to the purpose. Here are you, I say, with
everything to make you happy — plenty, every way; wealth and
servants; and a good husband, a nobleman of rank; one of the
first men in this country; who is as kind to you as man can be to
woman, and one of the most loving, if you 'd only suffer him; and
with one dear, beautiful child: and yet you sit here, pining and
trying to be wretched, when you should have a smile for everything,
and be singing your happiness from morning to night and
from night to morning. And what 's the pretence for all this?
Why, that once, when you were a foolish, inexperienced child,
you made a ridiculous engagement—”

“Which you then approved, mother.”

“Well, I did n't know, then, what I knew afterward — that you
might have a far better man.”

“No, mother: a richer, perhaps, but never a better!”

“And I say that makes a mighty difference. It 's one thing to
have a husband that can keep you in state and comfort, but quite
another to be married to poverty, and want, and shame—”

“Not shame, mother!”

“I say shame, Olive Berkeley — shame: for what is Poverty,
always, but a thing that must hold down its head, and walk humbly
through dark passages, and feel all the time that the world is
running over its neck? That 's shame; and that would have
been your portion if you had married Harry Berkeley. And if,
as you say, it is I that have done it — well, I say it 's something
of which I might well be proud, and for which you ought to be
thankful. And what 's the difference between the men, if you
come to that? Is n't the cassique as fine a looking man as his
younger brother?”

Olive answered nothing to this.

“Is n't he almost as young; quite as handsome; quite as wise
and learned; as brave and graceful; is n't he as noble and generous;
and does n't he, in fact, look almost as much like him as if
they had been twinned together?”

“Alas! mother, he looks too like him. He reminds me of him
for ever!”

“Well!—”

“Well — but I know that he is not Harry!”

And a gush of tears followed; and the young wife, hearing her
husband's footstep in the passage, rose hastily and left the room —
but not before the cassique, entering, discovered that she was in
tears. She did not look up — hardly noted his appearance; but
he, quickened to keenest scrutiny by his own anxieties of heart,
detected all her emotions in the one passing glance which he
caught of her convulsed features as she went. In the face and
manner of the mother he distinguished the proofs of recent controversy;
of vulgar authority; of a harsh, ungenial censure; of
a temper too little ruled by thought or sensibility to permit her
to become a consoler or counsellor for a bruised and suffering
spirit.

“Madam,” said he sternly, “I could wish that you would say
nothing to Olive on the subject of her sorrows, whatever they may
be. I know not what they are. I can not decipher this mystery;
nor, it appears, according to your admission, is it in your power
to do so. You allege to me that you know nothing of her present
cause of grief.”

“To be sure not, my son; but—”

“To attempt to cure the disease of which we know nothing,
must be to hurt, not to help; and we may kill the patient in the
fond attempt to save. You will permit me once more to insist
that you make no such attempt. Do not pry into her mystery.
You will only aggravate her suffering, as, I am sorry to tell you,
is invariably the case, after your conversations with her. As her
mother, you are naturally solicitous; but solicitude here requires
forbearance. We must be content to wait upon her moods, to
watch their changes; and leave it to herself to suggest the means
by which we may bring succor to her mind or body. Once more,
madam, I repeat the wish, the injunction, that you will not again

trouble her on the subject of her afflictions. Leave them to time
— leave them to me, madam, if you please.”

And, saying these words, not waiting for any answer, he withdrew
from the apartment; and, hurriedly moving now, left the
house, to rejoin the workmen without.

The mother shot an angry glance after the son-in-law. Had
she but dared, she would have given him a precious tongue-volley
as he went. But the virago was always subdued in the presence
of this stern man, who never addressed her one gratuitous word;
whose words were always direct, even as fiery arrows sent headlong
to the mark; whom she felt 't would be dangerous to trifle
with. She well knew that the slightest disposition to pass between
him and his wife, or his will, would insure her immediate dismissal
from his house.

“Leave it to you, indeed!” she muttered; “as if you could
better know than me what is my child's trouble, and how to cure
it! Well I never let him know of that engagement! He shall
never know! No, no; that would be terrible! He 'd never forgive
me that! But I must make Olive sensible to reason. She 's
just throwing away happiness and fortune. I know this man so
well, that, sooner than stand this sort of life another year, he 'd
break loose from everything. And if, in his fury, he was to demand
the truth from Olive, she 'd be just as like as not to tell him
every syllable. She has n't the sense to keep her own secrets or
mine. And if she was to do that, what would become of her —
and me? He 'd swear that we deceived him! No, no! — I must
bring Olive to her proper senses, before it 's too late. He 's
becoming sterner and more keen every day. He must not be
driven too far. She must be driven rather.”

We shall see something yet of this driving process on the part
of our loving mother!