University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
A FLARE UP BETWEEN MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

We bagged our prey as well as we could. The overseer had
providently ordered a cart to follow the party, and our spoils filled
it:—the dead hogs being at the bottom, while the maternal
porker, still unhurt, with her numerous progeny, grunted all the
way home, from a spacious but bloody couch in the centre of her
slain associates. I forbear numerous small details of our adventure,
satisfied to have given all the material facts. I may mention here,
that, subsequently, one of the party, who possessed a wonderful
faculty for caricature, executed a drawing to the life, and brimfull
of spirit, of the serio-ludicro exhibition of the Knight of the
Bleeding Heart, at the moment of his unexpected descent among
the swine. He is bestraddling the mammoth boar, on all fours,
hands thrown forward, as if grasping at the tail of the beast, while
his legs are scattered `all abroad' over the animal's neck. The

rest of the hogs are grouped around in various attitudes, more or
less influenced by the advent of the Knight. The little pigs, in
particular, with snouts uplifted and tails upcurled, are recoiling
with evident awe and apprehension, seeming to ask,—`Heavens!
what are we to look for next?' The picture is preserved with great
care at the Bulmer Barony, where it may be seen at any moment,[1]
much to the secret disquiet of the graceful young Knight, who is
the hero of the scene.

But I must not linger in the narration of such episodes, even
though they constituted the chief exercises and amusements of the
Christmas holidays. Day and night, for two weeks, we were on
the move,—now to this club house, or that,—this or that dance or
dinner party,—seeing new faces daily with the old ones, and having
no moment unemployed with brisk and pleasant exercises. I
must not forget to mention that, in the meanwhile, Ned Bulmer
grew better, and, as his sorenesses of body lessened, those of his
heart seemed to increased. As soon as he was able to go forth, we
went together on a visit to Bonneau Place, where he had the felicity
of enjoying a more civil welcome from the grandmother than
he had altogether expected, and where I succeeded, by going out
with that excellent old lady to admire her poultry, in giving him
a chance for a half hour's sweet secret chat with Paula. Of course,
nobody cares to listen to the prattle of young lovers, who are mere
children always, the sympathies and affections leaving them no
motive for the exercise of thoughts.

Leaving it to the reader's imagination and experience, to supply
this portion of my chapter, let me peep, for a while, into the habitation
of my own cynosure. We will suppose ourselves, therefore,

at Mazyck Place, on the morning of the day when Madame Girardin
and Paula received their invitations to the grand festival to come off
on Christmas, at the Barony. Mrs. Mazyck and Beatrice had received
invitations at the same time, and they, too, required to sit in
council upon the matter. The subject was one of great doubt and
deliberation in the one household as in the other. Most people of
insular life, living in the country, and only occasionally in society,
are tenacious and jealous of their social claims in much greater degree
than people of a city. Seclusion is a great nurse of self-esteem,
and all matters, however minute and unimportant, which
affect the social position or estimates, are weighed with a nicety
and observance, in rural life, which really provoke a smile only
among persons to whom the jostle with humanity is a daily and
constantly recurring thing. In the city, the crowd is always compensative
for the ill-treatment of the clique. You care little for
that denial or neglect from the one group, which is more than made
up to you by the attentions of another. You find refuge in one set
from the exclusiveness of its rival; and, where the city is a large
one, there is no class or street, without a sufficiently solacing circle,
in which you may find wit, intelligence, grace of manner, and virtue,
quite adequate, at once, to your claims and your desires.
Accordingly, you miss no consideration, and are comparatively heedless
of neglect. People, tacitly, make their communities on every
side, and he must be a poor devil, indeed, who may not readily find
all the companionship which suits his tastes and necessities. But,
the case is far otherwise in the sparsely settled abodes of our interior;
and this is just in degree with the real wealth and resources
of the planters. Large plantations push away permanent society,
and make it inconvenient to procure it regularly. Hence, the hospitality
of all those regions which continually welcome their guests
from abroad. Hence, again, a sort of rivalry among the several
proprietors in the state which they keep and the entertainment of
their guests. But this aside. Enough here to indicate the sort of
influence which helps to make people tenacious of every claim or
right, and resentful of the most shadowy appearance of neglect or
slight. The self-esteem which is continually nursed, while it is the
parent of a character which delights in noble exhibitions and revolts
at meannesses, is yet apt to be watchful, jealous, suspicious,
and forever on the qui vive to let you understand that it feels
itself quite as good as its neighbour; that it is quite independent
of the social sunshine issuing from your portals; that it has friends
enough, and fortune enough, and guests enough, all of its own,
and no thanks to any body,—et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

Mrs. Mazyck was a proud and stately lady, of real worth, of excellent
habits and family, some wealth, and great hospitality. But
she was touched with this very infirmity of self-esteem, and jealous
self-esteem, in considerable degree. She noted your absences,
the infrequency of your calls, your failure in solicitude, your want
of reverence when present. She seemed to keep a calendar, in
which all things were regularly set down against your account.
She would receive no excuses,—she had no faith in apologies,—
took nothing into consideration,—made no allowances,—when
these charges were once entered on her books. You had been
sick perhaps,—“Hum! Yes! so I hear, but he could find health
enough to call on Mrs. G— or Mrs. B—.” You had been
very much employed in settling the affairs of the estate, had been
to the city, and had really been too busy to make any visits.—
“Perhaps! Yet it is something curious that business could not
keep him away from the party at Mrs. —'s.” True: but that
was a family rëunion, and you went by special invitation. “Oh!
I don't need to be told of the difference between a lively party, a
dance and a supper, and the dull duty of calling to see a tedious
old woman.” So, you must beware, when actually within the
charmed circle of her presence, that you linger not too long beside
any other dame, whose state or position is at all comparable to her
own;—so, beware also, that, when making your respects to her, you
betray not too much eagerness to cross the room to listen to the

gay chat of the P's, or G's, or B's, or S's. You will be remembered
for all these offences against her amour propre. The haughty
lady will as indifferently detach you from her hooks of favour, and
cast you out into the stream, as the angler casts off the worm, that,
having suffered the infliction of frequent nibblings, is no longer
able or willing to wriggle upon the hook.

Behold her, as she sits, grave, dignified and stern, beside the fire
place, stately in her purple-cushioned and luxurious rocker, in that
trim, well-furnished parlour, great mirrors lining the lofty walls,
and rich curtains of blue and white, trimmed with silver, subduing
still more the feeble light of the December sun, as it glides, like
an unnoticed angel, into the apartment. The old lady has evidently
clad herself that morning in her ancientest social buckram.
Her toilet, as usual, has been elaborately made;—and her black
velvet, flowing and abundant, is as smooth as the daily goings on
of her household. Her tiring woman has dressed her hair with
more than her wonted nicety; and the few curls which nature has
left to her, or which,—making a certain feminine sacrifice to worldly
notions,—she has allotted to herself, are admirably balanced on
each side of her high forehead. Her movements are quite too
measured to suffer her to decompose them throughout the whole
day. There they will keep their place till folded out of sight for
the night, either beneath her night-cap, or in the nice little antique
rose-wood cabinet of her boudoir. She belongs to an old school,
in which state and form are habitual, and where, if any thing fails,
it is nature only, and that art which is its proper shadow,—which
is modestly content and happy when suffered to be its handmaid.

The good lady meditates bolt upright. A work table is beside
her, on which rests a gold-edged, pink-hued billet, the contents
partly legible to her eye where it lies. She takes it up, scans it
over, lays it down, and uplifts her eyebrows. Her lips, you see,
are closely compressed. The effect is not a pleasant one on an
antique visage, particularly where the lips are thin. She again
takes up the billet, but as she hears a voice and a footstep, she

again lays it upon the table, this time with a little hurry in her
manner. She evidently does not desire to be seen meditating its
contents.

Beatrice enters, calm, sweet, as if all her passions were subdued
to angels. Beatrice possesses real dignity,—a quality that is free
from any ostentatious consciousness of its possession. She has no
affectations of any kind. No temper could be more serene,—no
sunshine more agreeable in its warmth, or less broken by the interposing
shadows of vanity, or arrogance, or pretence, or presumption.
But I will let Beatrice,—my Beatrice,—reveal herself.
I will not undertake to describe her, for I should never know where
to begin, or where to stop. Beatrice quietly approaches her mother,
and takes up the billet.

“Sould this not be answered to-day, mother?”

“What is it, my child?” was the answer of mamma, profoundly
ignorant of the nature of the note.

“The invitation of Major Bulmer for Christmas!”

“Oh!—ah!—and what answer do you propose to send, Beatrice?”

“What answer, mother? We accept, of course!”

“I don't see why of course.”

The damsel looked her surprise. The mother proceeded.

“I am not sure that I shall accept.”

“Indeed! Why not?”

“You are at liberty to do as you please. You are young, and
will like to be among the young people; but, as it is quite as much
on your account as my own, that I shall decline going to Major
Bulmer, you, too, perhaps, may see the propriety of following my
example.”

“On my account.”

“Yes, my child, on your account partly, and partly on my own.”

“Why, mother, this is very strange.”

“You may think so. Young people are very unobservant, and
the young people of the present generation, I must say, are quite

too indifferent to the sort of treatment they receive. They love
society too much; they are ever ready to take it on any terms.
Now, for my part, I have always been taught to receive it as a
due, and not as a favour, and to welcome it as a right rather than
a benevolence.”

Beatrice had witnessed quite too many instances of this sort of
crotchettiness on the part of her excellent mamma, not to see, at
once, that her soup had been temporarily under-seasoned. She
had acquired some skill in the business of soothing the irritated
appetite, and supplying the ingredients necessary,—to use an
orientalism,—for the conserve of a delicious temper. But she
was really taken by surprise at this demonstration in the present
quarter. She had seen the Major and her mamma exceedingly intimate
only a week or two before. Nay, she had seen sufficient
proofs, by which she had been greatly disquieted, of the secret
object which the two parties had equally meditated of bringing
Ned Bulmer and herself together. What had brought about the
present alteration in the state of affairs? What had cooled off
the parties? Beatrice was not unwilling, I may say in this place,
that there should be an end to the conspiracy against her happiness
and that of Ned. But she had no desire that there should
be a cloud and a wall between the two families. She was worried
accordingly. Mammas, she well knew, having single,—ought I
not rather to say only,—daughters, are apt to be fussy and fidgetty;
just as you see an old hen, whom the hawk has robbed of every
chicken but one,—making more clack and clutter, and showing
more pride and pother, than all the poultry yard beside;—and
the dear girl had long since resolved, that she, at least, would not
contribute in any way to make herself the chicken so ridiculously
conspicuous. There was no more unpresuming, unpretending
damsel, for one of her pretensions, in the world. Now, as the last
sentence of her mamma was tingling in her ears, she fancied she
could catch the clues of her difficulty; but her guess did not persuade
her to spare the excellent old lady any portion of the necessity

of speaking out, in proper terms, the subject of her embarrassment.

“Really, mamma, you speak in oracles. I can't conceive why
you should speak of society accorded to you as a benevolence
rather than as a due,—and that, too, on the part of the Bulmer
family. They seem to me to have always distinguished you with
the most becoming attentions. Miss Janet is one of the most docile
and humble creatures in the world, and she has been solicitously
heedful of us both; the old Major, himself, has been so attentive,
particularly of late, that, really, mamma, I had begun to
entertain some apprehensions that the Fates were about to punish
me with a step-father, in order to make me atone for some of my
offences.”

“Beatrice,—Miss Mazyck,”—with a most freezing aspect of rebuke,—the
old lady drawing up her knees and laying her hands
solemnly in her lap,—“You know not what you are saying.”

“Oh! yes, mamma, I know very well. How else could I account
for the long letter you received from the Major last summer,
and the long letter you wrote to him in return, neither of
which did you suffer me to see, though you do me the honour
usually to make me your amanuensis with all your other correspondents.”

“There were reasons for the exception, Miss Mazyck.”

“Precisely, mamma; that's what I'm saying,—there was a special
reason for that exception —”

“I said reasons, not a special reason, Miss Mazyck.”

“Well, mamma, and I thought it only reasonable to conclude
your reasons to be resolvable into a special reason. When, after
our return, the Major was the first to call upon you, and when
you took him out, under the pretext of visiting the loom-house,
and the smoke-house, and the poultry-yard, and heaven knows
what else; and when you were gone together almost an hour,—
how could I suppose any thing else, than the particular danger to
myself, if not to you, that I have mentioned?”

“You are disrespectful, Beatrice.”

“Surely not, mamma.”

“You know not what you are saying. You know not the business
on which Major Bulmer wrote me that letter and paid me
that visit.”

“Certainly not, mamma, I only conjectured, and I give you my
conjecture. As you never condescended to let me into the secret,
I naturally thought that it more particularly concerned yourself.”

“You are a very foolish child, Beatrice. The letters concerned
you, rather than me. The visit was paid on your account. If I
went out with Major Bulmer, you were left here with his son.”

“No, mamma, you mistake; I was left with Mr. Cooper.”

“Yes, Miss Mazyck, and that reminds me of the first show of
disrespect, to our family, on the part of Major Bulmer's. Mr. Edward
Bulmer treated you with so little consideration, that he left
you as soon as our backs were turned, and, when found, was
stretched off and sleeping in the library. Was that proper treatment
of my daughter?”

“Really, mamma, I never missed him.”

The old lady gave her daughter a severe and suspicious glance,
but did not answer the remark. She proceeded thus:

“Whether you missed him or not, does not alter the fact with
regard to his conduct on that occasion. It was highly improper,
and very disrespectful. But his disrespect did not end here. On
the night of the party, he did not dance with you once.”

“In that, if there be any thing to blame, I am the offender.
He applied to me twice or three times for the privilege of dancing
with me, and each time I was engaged.”

“Yes, but could he not have engaged you for the dance afterwards?”

“I am not sure but he sought to do so. It is certain, that, throughout
the evening, I was engaged, most usually, one or more dances
ahead.”

“If there had been a will for it, Beatrice, there had been a way.”

“That is, if both our wills agreed. There, I conceive, the difficulty
to have lain. I confess, I see nothing in Mr. Bulmer's conduct,
on that occasion, which could be construed into slight or disrespect.”

“You do not want to see, Beatrice.”

“You are right, mamma. I am not anxious, at any time, to pick
out and seek for the flaws and infirmities in my neighbour.”

“That may be a very pious principle of conduct, my daughter,
which, in every day matters, I cannot disapprove of; but there are
cases where a proper pride requires the exercise of proper resentment.
The conduct of Major Bulmer and his son, has not satisfied
me since the night of the ball. They have neither of them darkened
these doors since.”

“Why, mother, how could they? You surely could not expect
them, suffering, as they did, from such an accident that night.
Mr. Edward Bulmer has been laid up with a broken arm, and the
old Major was covered with bruises.”

“But he could find his limbs and body sound enough to visit
Mrs. Girardin.”

“Surely, and he was bound to do so; the friendly care, the
charitable kindness, the magnanimity of the old lady, that night,
in giving her assistance, so promptly, and with so much real benevolence
and kindness to the sufferers, called for the earliest and
most grateful acknowledgment. As a gentleman, merely, if not
as a Christian and human being, Major Bulmer could do no less
than pay her a visit, of thanks and gratitude, as soon as he was
able.”

“Yes, and Miss Bulmer could go too. Both could pay their
respects in that quarter, and neither in ours.”

“Ah! mamma! so you find cause of complaint in poor Miss
Janet, too, one of the best of human creatures.”

“Yes, indeed; if they could visit one house, they might well
visit another; and there were reasons why they should have been
here, if only to explain.”

“Explain!”

“Yes, explain! You can't, at present, understand; but I mean
it when I say explain! There's another thing, Beatrice. Mrs.
Girardin and Paula Bonneau have both been invited to the Christmas
party at Major Bulmer's. I have it from Sally, the cook. Her
husband, Ben, belonging to Paula, told Sally of the invitation, and
of the very day when it was given.”

“What more natural. The Major and Miss Bulmer could not
surely have omitted them.”

“What! after the long quarrel between the families?”

“For that very reason, mother. A quarrel is not to be kept up
for ever in a Christian country; and what better occasion for reconciliation
than when one of the parties assists the other in a case
of extremity; and what better season than this, when God himself
despatches his only Son on a mission of Love, Forgiveness, and
final reconciliation between himself and his offending people?
Really, mamma, if you were to say to others what you have said
to me, people would begin to suspect you of Paganism.”

“Better call me a Pagan, at once, Miss Mazyck!” growled
mamma, gathering herself up in the attitude of one about to spring.
“But, it is not that Mrs. Girardin and her grand-daughter have
been invited, that I complain. But when I know that the invitation
was sent to them, a whole day and night before any was sent
to us, that, Miss Mazyck —”

“That, mamma, is one of those offences that cannot but be committed,
and which there is no helping. It is done every day. All
cannot be served at the same moment. While one's soup is
scalding him, another, at the extremity of the table, finds his a
little cooler than soup ought to be. Somebody must always be last.”

“But I am not pleased to be that somebody, Miss Mazyck.”

“And, in this case, mamma, I am very sure you are not. I
would wager something that if Mrs. Girardin received the first,
you had the second invitation.”

“Perhaps; but that does not altogether satisfy me, considering
the terms on which Major Bulmer and myself stood together.”

“Ah! those terms, mamma,” said Beatrice archly and with a
smile. The mother did not attend to the remark, but proceeded
as if she had not heard it:

“But, I see the whole secret. The fact is, that Mrs. Girardin
has a good deal of foresight and a grand-daughter, and Major Bulmer
has a handsome fortune and a son; and charity by the wayside,
may bring its benefits into the parlour; and they do say that
Miss Paula is not insensible to the wealth and person of Mr. Edward
Bulmer, and so —”

“Mother, mother!” cried Beatrice reproachfully; “do not suffer
yourself to speak such things. Mrs. Girardin, I am sure, would
have done for the blind beggar, by the highway, all that she did
for Major Bulmer —”

“What! with her pride?”

“Her pride is ridiculous enough, I grant you, but so far as I
have ever seen, it has never been indulged at the expense of her
humanity. I am sure, at least, that her pride would have been
enough to keep her from any calculations in respect to the Bulmer
family, its son and wealth. She is certainly too proud for any
scheming to obtain any thing from that or any other family. As
for Paula Bonneau, I know no woman who better deserves the best
favour of fortune in a husband; but she is to be sought, mother,
and she will not herself be found on the search for a lover. Let
me so far correct your opinion as to tell you what the world reports
in respect to Paula Bonneau. It says that Edward Bulmer has
long been her devoted, if not her accepted lover, and that she is truly
attached to him, in spite of the hostility of her grandmother, so that
most of your suspicions are wrong, if those of the world be right.”

“It is impossible, Beatrice,—it is impossible!” said the mother,
pushing away the stool beneath her feet, and rising with an air
of outraged dignity. “The terms between Major Bulmer and myself—”

“Ah! those terms again, mother. Pray, what is the mysterious
nature of this affair between you and Major Bulmer? Really, unless
you tell me plainly the state of the case, I shall have to fall
back upon my old suspicions. My powers of divination yield me
no other conjectures.”

The mother quickened her movements across the room, then
wheeling about, confronted the daughter with a somewhat imperious
manner, as she said,—

“Well, if you must know,—and, under present appearances, I
see no reason to maintain a useless secrecy,—you must know that
Major Bulmer has proposed for you, and that I consented —”

“Major Bulmer, for me,—why, mamma, he is old enough for
my grandfather!” cried the girl in unaffected astonishment.

“Pshaw, Beatrice, you surely know what I mean. He proposed
far you on behalf of his son.”

“And you consented?”

“Yes,—I consented. I thought the match a very eligible one.”

“But how could you consent, mother, to any thing of the sort?
Did you mean that I was to have no voice in the matter?”

“No, by no means; but I took it for granted, my daughter, that
you would see the thing in its proper light,—see the advantages of
such a match—and I consented that the Major should open the
matter to his son —”

“Heavens! mother! what have you done!” exclaimed Beatrice,
the rich red suffusing cheeks and neck, while a singular brightness
flashed freely out from her dilating eyes. It was her turn to rise
and pace the apartment. “What have you done! How have
you shamed me! So, Edward Bulmer is to be persuaded, under
an arrangement with my own mother, to behold in me the proper
handmaid upon whom it is only necessary that he should bestow
his smiles, in order to obtain submission. I am to be made happy
by the bounty of his love. Oh! mother! mother! how could you
do this thing?”

“But, my dear, you see it in a very peculiar and improper light. I—”

“I see it in the only light. It appears by your own showing,—
and, indeed, I know the fact,—that Mr. Bulmer has had no part in
this beautiful arrangement. He must be argued into it; and his
father must provide him with the proper spectacles—his or your's,
mother,—looking through which, he is to discover what he never
of himself could see, that I am the proper young woman whom he
should espouse. You have done wrong, mother,—you have been
guilty of a great cruelty. You have shamed me in my own eyes.”

“How!—how!”

“Who will suppose,—Major Bulmer or his son, think you?—that
you would venture to pledge the affections of your daughter, to
one whose affections have yet to be persuaded.”

“Oh! no! by no means. I told the Major that you knew nothing
—”

“Of course! and had I known every thing, it still would have
been an amiable maternal error—quite venial and rather pretty,
perhaps—to have made exactly the same assurance. The Major
believes just as much of it as he pleases,—the son as little;—and
I—and I—I am to appear as the humble virgin, dutiful at the
threshold, as another Ruth, entreating to be taken into the household
of the wealthy Boaz. Oh! what have you done, mother!
What have you done!”

And a passion of tears followed the drawing of the humiliating
picture. The mother was astounded, and began to fear that, in her
previous consideration of the subject, she had excluded from view
some of the proper lights for judging it. She began to falter, and
to make assurances. But the daughter had risen in strength and
dignity, just in degree as the mother had declined. Her tears had
ceased to flow, but her soul was up in arms, and the fires now
flowed from the eyes that lately wept. Her form, always lofty and
noble, now rose into a sort of queenly majesty, that filled the old
lady with admiration.

“As for Edward Bulmer,” said Beatrice, “he is not for me, nor
I for him. I have long known that he loved Paula Bonneau;

and I have good reason to believe that his love is requited. But
even had he been willing, mother, his father willing, and you willing,
I should not have willed the connexion.”

“But, Beatrice, my daughter,” interposed the mother, now
thoroughly alarmed, “you do not tell me you will marry against
my consent.”

“No mother; but I mean to tell you that I will never marry
until I have my own consent!”

A carriage at this moment rolled into the court below. The
mother looked through the blinds.

“It is Major Bulmer's, and Miss Janet is getting out.”

“One word then, mother,—we both must accept this invitation,
and it must be frankly and unreservedly—unless we wish the whole
parish to suspect that, in the union of the houses of Bulmer and
Bonneau, Beatrice Mazyck has suffered a mortification,—Beatrice
Mazyck has been rejected by him to whom her mother has offered
her in sacrifice.”

“Oh! my child! How can you say so?”

The dialogue was interrupted by the entrance of the ancient
but amiable maiden, whom Beatrice received with an affectionate
kiss, and her mother with a laborious smile. It need not scarcely
be said, that Beatrice had her own way, and that the invitation
was accepted.