 | Some women's hearts |  |
HOUSEHOLD GODS.
IT would be hard to imagine any young, strong,
healthy woman more apparently helpless than was
Marian Eyre after her father's death. She looked her
affairs in the face the day after his funeral, and confessed
to herself this fact.
Her mother had been dead so long that she could
scarcely remember her; and during all the years since
she had lived with her father, and been educated by
him, both living and educating going on in the desultory,
inconsequent, fragmentary manner in which a
man who was half saint and half Bohemian and wholly
dreamer, would be likely to conduct them. As to
morals, St. Anthony himself was no purer than Reginald
Eyre. His Bohemianism was only the outgrowth
of his restlessness. It suited him to breakfast to-day
with the dawning, and climb an Alp before sunset; to
lie in bed to-morrow till noon, and sup coffee as
lazily as a Turk in his Oriental-looking dressing-gown.
He liked to winter one year in Rome, another in
Florence, and a third in Venice, web-footed, melancholy,
Life there was too bustling, too melodramatic. The
French recklessness and laisser-faire were of quite another
kind from his own, and therefore did not suit him.
But half over Europe he and Marian had wandered together.
She had learned languages from hearing them
spoken; and art-history from studying among galleries
and ruins. This wandering, beauty-worshipping life
suited her, and made of her what she was, — just
Marian.
I would I could make you see the face of clear,
healthy paleness; the eyes which had caught the color
of so many skies and moods, and never seemed twice
the same; the sensitive, proud mouth; the head set
like Diana's, and as small and stately. She was her
father's idol as well as his companion, — the fair embodiment
for him of womanhood. He always saw, through
her eyes, her mother's soul; and he had never loved
any woman but those two.
He had inherited quite a little fortune; but after his
wife died, and his wandering habits began to grow on
him, he turned it all into an annuity, because its ordinary
interest would not keep him and Marian in the
roaming way that had grown to seem to him the only
life he could endure. In every thing else his moral
standard was of the highest; so I will wait until I find
a flawless soul, which has won by virtue of its own
spotlessness a right to question, before I try to reconcile
for him his idleness with his conscience. In truth,
I do not think the matter had ever troubled him. He
his duty in his day and generation; and perhaps he
was. If he had sold salt and potatoes at home, and
increased his banking account, would he have done
more, or better? I am not casuist enough for such
questions.
His annuity, of course, was to end with his life; but
he had sufficient forethought for Marian to deny himself
many a lovely bit of wood-carving, many a choice
old missal, many an antique, for which his soul longed,
in order to insure that life heavily, and pay each year
therefor a large percentage from his annuity, so that
when they two could roam together among the wonders
of art and of nature no longer she would not want
the means for making her life beautiful without him.
At last they had come home to New York.
Though they were far more familiar with half a dozen
foreign towns, they always called New York home,
because there Marian's mother had died, and in an old
down-town church-yard her dust lay blossoming into
roses and pansies when the summer suns shone on her
grave. They had always had a theory that they were
coming back there to settle, when Marian's education
was completed. Now she was twenty-three; but Mr.
Eyre saw that his mission as educator might still be
prolonged with advantage to her and ever fresh delight
to himself; so he compromised with the old theory by
coming home for this one winter, intending to go back
in the spring.
They had plenty of cousins in New York, on whom
Livingstones and Brevoorts received them with much
eagerness. They liked to see Marian at their parties.
There was something unique and distinguished-looking
about both her face and her toilets. The soft-falling
Italian silks she wore, and the antique ornaments, suited
her calm, proud face and her manner of graceful repose.
But from none of these people could Reginald Eyre or
his daughter have been willing to receive, or felt free
to ask, any thing beyond this courtesy, which, after all,
claimed more than it conferred.
They had rooms at the St. Denis,— these two, —
and had unpacked for their adornment whole trunks
and boxes of treasures, — choice carvings in wood and
ivory, illuminated missals, old line engravings by dead
masters, cameos, coins, bronzes, and a few pictures,
brightening the gray New York of mid-winter with
glimpses of Italian heavens.
Here, in the midst of this gay season, — in which,
however, despite the gayety, Reginald Eyre was secretly
homesick and restless, — he had been taken
suddenly very ill. A few moments' delay in the drawing
up of their carriage, after they came out of the
heated air of a large party, was the only discernible
cause of an attack of pneumonia so severe that it
terminated his life in a week, in spite of the best
medical skill and the tenderest nursing.
He died, as he had lived, like a dreamer: no thought
of neglected opportunities or neglected work troubled
his last hours. He spoke to Marian, in the few intervals
gave her none of the traditional death-bed counsels and
exhortations.
“I think God has loved us, my darling,” he said
once. “I have missed nothing in life but your mother,
and I shall find her now.”
Marian was lifted out of herself by the calm expectation
of his mood. She did not shed any tears over
him, or utter any moans. Time enough for that in the
long hours afterward. He saw her to the last, as he
had loved to see her, with her fair, unstained face, her
true, hopeful eyes. The last words he said to her, an
hour before he died, were only, —
“We have been good comrades, Marian. You will
miss me in the old places, but not for long. Nothing is
long that has its sure end. It seems but yesterday
since I kissed your mother's lips when she was dying.”
Just at the last the pains of death shook him cruelly.
He could not speak, and his only good-by to Marian
was the clinging hold of his fingers upon her hand,
which did not relax until those fingers stiffened and
grew cold.
The morning after his funeral Marian looked listlessly
into the paper. She had done every thing
listlessly in the three days since her father died.
Sometimes she thought her soul had gone out of her,
and only her body remained, ruled by dull instinct
and old habit. She unfolded the paper, and looked it
over with no interest about what it might chance to
contain, but simply because it was her morning wont.
roused her. The office in which her father's life was
insured had failed, gone utterly to ruin. She understood
her situation perfectly. She knew how resolute
he had been in making this provision for her; how
entirely it was her sole dependence. Her very first
thought was one of profound thankfulness that he had
been spared this blow; that he had died without anxiety
for her. The next was the question which has confronted
so many other helpless women with its blind
terror, — the problem society would find it well worth
its while to aid them in solving, — what should she do?
She loved music passionately, but she had never
learned its theories; poetry, but she had never written
it; pictures, but she could not paint them; sculpture,
but she had never thought of modelling. Of
course teaching came to her mind for a moment, as it
presents itself to most women similarly circumstanced,
but it seemed clear to her that she had no vocation
for it, and there was no one thing she could have
taught well enough to satisfy her conscience. Besides,
the world was full of teachers already, to whom the
calling belonged by right of possession. She would
have shrunk, in any case, from entering their already
overcrowded ranks. But what could she do?
She looked around her and reckoned up her worldly
possessions. A few hundred dollars remained of their
last quarter's funds. Besides, she had two rooms full of
carvings and pictures and bronzes, — a sort of museum
of art. They had been selected, she knew, with taste
of them, — some of them very valuable. If well sold,
they ought to bring her a good deal; but she had
heard how ruinously such things were often sacrificed
at auction. The commissions a regular dealer would
require for disposing of them would be large, and
that method of effecting their sale would be slow.
At this moment an inspiration visited her. What if
she should take a room and dispose of them herself?
She understood art well enough to be sure that she
could arrange them so as to show to the best advantage.
She would need the countenance and assistance
of one experienced saleswoman; and while she was
thus engaged in turning into available funds her own
sole inheritance, she would be getting a little knowledge
of trade, and might perhaps be able to find
employment afterward in some picture store or art
gallery. At any rate, there appeared this one step to
take, this one beginning to be made, in answer to her
problem, and doubtless the rest of its solution would
come afterward.
In this emergency she needed a friend, and she ran
over the list of her acquaintances, as she had previously
that of her possessions. She could not apply to any of
her hosts of more or less far removed cousins. Eyres
and Livingstones and Brevoorts, one and all, held themselves
grandly above all trade of lesser degree than
sending out ships to fetch home silks and velvets.
Especially would they hold a woman's hand so soiled
by it that no floods could make it clean. Her father's
as himself. But there was just one of them, a man of
different type, to whom in this emergency her thoughts
turned. So she sat down and wrote a note to Mr.
Nathaniel Upjohn, and that evening he answered it in
person.
He was a man of thirty-five, with no air of trying to
be younger than that, no attempt to catch at the youth
slipping for ever away from him; but yet a man whom
you would never associate with coming age; who
seemed strong and resolute enough to stand still here
in middle life for ever. He had made his own large
fortune by his own hard work; and yet he was not
merely a worker. He liked whatever was best and
worthiest in art and in literature, and these tastes had
brought him acquainted with Marian's father.
I am telling too simple a story to require any disguises.
I am quite willing you should understand that
this middle-aged, busy, practical man was very much
in love with Marian Eyre. In knowing so much, however,
you are wiser than she was, for she had not even
suspected it. He had come to see them only occasionally,
and then his conversations had been chiefly with
her father, though his eyes seldom lost sight of Marian.
He had not meant to let her know what he felt for her
at present, if ever. He thought himself removed from
her by some subtile barriers which nothing in her manner
had encouraged in him the slightest expectation of
surmounting. But when her note came to him, when
he understood by it that she would allow him — him of
sorrow, a wild, sweet hope sprang to life in his heart,
which, however, almost her first words dispelled.
She came into the room in her deep mourning garments,
a pale, sad creature, from whose face all the
brightness seemed gone, but who had never been so
lovely in his eyes at her brightest and her best. She
gave him her hand, but there was no response in it to
his tender clasp. She looked at him, but she did not
seem to see him.
She began at once upon the business on which she
had desired his opinion, and told him her wishes in a
few direct sentences, as if she had arranged beforehand
what she would say, and was afraid to trust herself to
utter an unnecessary word. In five minutes he understood
her position.
“That I should do something,” she said, in conclusion,
“you perceive to be a simple necessity. That
I should do this very thing for a beginning, appears to
me clearly for the best; and I sent for you because I
knew no one else so capable of giving me good, sound,
practical advice. I must have a suitable salesroom,
and a proper clerk or assistant, and I suppose there are
some means which I ought to take to bring myself, or
rather my possessions, to the knowledge of the public.
Can you put me in the way of all this?”
“If necessary, I suppose I can; but it seems to me
there must be something else for you to do. I do not
want to see the treasures my old friend collected with
such loving patience scattered to the four winds.”
“That will probably be no more hard for you than
for me,” Marian said, with a petulance for which she
condemned herself the next moment. “Forgive me,
but I have thought it over on all sides. It seems to
me it is the only thing I can do; and we shall not
make it any easier by lingering over it. You perceive
that I could not even afford to hire a room in which to
keep my possessions, therefore I must part with them.
Will you help me?”
Some words came to his lips then which he had not
meant to speak. He said them hurriedly.
“I wish, Marian, that you would let me help you to
some purpose. I did not mean to tell you, for you
have given me no encouragement, but I love you
deeply and dearly; and if you could love me, and let
your future be my care, you would be spared all this,
which it is misery to me to see you suffer.”
“I am no Circassian girl,” Marian said proudly;
“have you had any reason to think I could be
bought?”
Her face was kindled now, — aflame with pride and
spirit. Her cheeks glowed, her wide eyes held scornful
meaning.
“Did I try to buy you?” he asked, with a gentleness
which disarmed her pride. “I said if you could love
me. Love is no matter of bargain and sale; but I
believe I have realized from the first how vain my hope
was. I will try to help you, in your own way, since
you cannot let me help you in mine. I must have
a little time, however, to think how it can best be
come or write to you to-morrow evening.”
“I do not deserve that you should be so kind,” she
said, very humbly, as he got up to go. “I know that
you have done me great honor; but you can hardly
understand how determined I am to help myself. The
life I look forward to has for me no especial terrors,
while to marry a man because I was destitute and he
pitied me would be in my eyes a crime.”
“It would be no less than that in mine. If you had
loved me, you would not have misunderstood me. If I
had not loved you first, I should not have dared to pity
you. But I had no right to trouble you with my
dreams. Will you forgive me, and let me be your
friend?”
“If you will honor me so far. Perhaps you will be
my only one; but that I shall not mind.”
Then Mr. Nathaniel Upjohn went away, and Marian
was left, as she had chosen to be, alone; but her heart
was very lonely and desolate indeed, as she sat there
among her relics.
The next day she waited anxiously for news from Mr.
Upjohn. The afternoon post brought her two letters.
The first one, bearing Mrs. Gordon Livingstone's scarlet
and gilt monogram, she threw aside, and broke open
the other, directed in a strong, compact, business hand,
which she felt sure was that of her father's friend.
It contained a proposition, the result, as Mr. Upjohn
wrote, of earnest deliberation upon her matters. He
saw, with her, that the articles of virtu in her possession
that she herself was not the one to sell them;
while he entirely agreed with her as to the disadvantages
which would attend intrusting the matter to a
regular fine-arts dealer. But, in a building of his own,
on Broadway, were two vacant rooms. Of the larger
he proposed to make a storeroom, for the reception of
the articles en masse, while the other was to be tastefully
arranged as a salesroom, the things in it to be few
in number, in order that they might be advantageously
placed, while from time to time, as articles were sold,
the vacancies could be filled from the other room. He
had in his employ, moreover, and could well spare in her
service, precisely the right person for a salesman, while
he himself would undertake the necessary steps for
bringing the sale to the knowledge of the public; which
last matter, he thought, should be managed in a very
quiet manner, as the patronage of half a dozen art
connoisseurs was worth more than that of a hundred
promiscuous buyers. As for the expenses of this arrangement,
of course they would be paid from the proceeds;
he would not even venture to offer his rooms
rent free, but Miss Eyre might depend on being charged
only the exact cost which was incurred, and would be
saved from all extortion in the way of commissions.
He made bold not only to hope, but to urge, that this
plan which he had proposed might be resolved upon,
since it seemed to him the only one by which she could
at once fitly and advantageously accomplish her purpose.
The letter was somewhat of a surprise to Marian, —
it was at once so cool and so kind, so simple and so
business-like. Who would think that last night this
man had been laying his heart at her feet? If there
had been the least touch of love-making in his communication,
however, it is very certain that she would have
rejected his proposition. As it was, she began at once
to consider it favorably. It is possible that all the time
she had secretly shrunk from putting herself before the
public in this unaccustomed way; at any rate she was
not at all sorry to be relieved from it, and to feel that
her interests were to be so thoroughly well represented
without her aid.
Having reached this conclusion, she opened Mrs. Gordon
Livingstone's scented epistle. It was the letter of
a female diplomat. It began with condolences on the
death of Marian's father, and passed to sympathy in the
loss of Marian's fortune. But for this latter knowledge,
she said, she would not have ventured to intrude, even
by letter, upon her kinswoman in these first days of her
grief. As it was, she wrote at once, because she felt
impelled to open heart and home to her as a mother.
Would Marian come?
Then followed some rose-colored sentences about admiration
and appreciation, the pleasure she should expect
from her young relative's society; and then came
the true gist of the letter. She understood so well
dear Marian's pride and sensitiveness that she had determined
to bait her proposition with an opportunity
for her cousin to make herself useful. Her children
masters; but if Marian would oversee their practicing a
little, and talk French with them enough to impart to
them her own perfect accent, she could relieve herself
twice over from any unnecessary sense of obligation,
and feel that she made Mrs. Livingstone very greatly
her debtor.
A little smile of amusement crossed Marian's face.
She was not wanting in shrewdness, and though it had
not before occurred to her at what a premium such acquirements
as her own in music and languages might
be held, even unaccompanied by the gift or the inclination
to teach regularly, she perceived it clearly now,
through the flowery eloquence of Mrs. Livingstone's
periods. This benign kinswoman of hers was not one
to proffer benefits without having first made certain of
her quid pro quo; so, as after all the proposition suited
her, she felt no hesitation about availing herself of it.
She wrote a letter of acceptance, graceful and lady-like;
grateful, too, but frosted with a little reserve and
dignity. As her rooms were engaged up to the end of
the month she preferred to remain in them until then.
This would give her time to superintend the removal
of her effects, and to make her preparations.
By the same mail she sent her reply to Mr. Upjohn,
cordially thanking him, and putting her business matters
unreservedly into his hands.
During the fortnight which followed she bore herself
most bravely. All her father's cherished treasures —
all the lovely pictures, and bronzes, and vases, and
and pride during their happy, wandering years together
— were packed under her supervision, loaded
into commonplace vans, and carried off before her
eyes; and if she shed a tear over them, only Heaven
and silence knew it.
During this process of removal she saw Mr. Upjohn
frequently, and always in the aspect of her father's
friend, — a middle-aged man, kind, quiet, thoughtful,
and somewhat formal. At times she almost believed
that she had only dreamed that this man once asked
her to be his wife. The contradiction between those
few strange moments when he had startled her with his
love, and these cool, well-balanced interviews since,
puzzled her for a time, until she gave the puzzle up,
only too thankful to find in Mr. Upjohn what he was,
— her one true, strong, faithful friend, in this time when
she needed friends so much.
At length the whole thing was over. The last household
god was gone, — not even a pensive Psyche or a
winged Hope was left to bear her company. She had
thanked Mr. Upjohn, and given him her new address,
where she asked him to call and report progress; settled
all her bills, and still she had half an hour before the
time appointed for Mrs. Livingstone's carriage to come
for her. She had meant to avoid this, and had lingered
over her closing tasks that she might not have time to
think. But still a space remained, and silence and
memory confronted her, and would have their will of
her.
It was a sharp wrench to go out of these rooms
which she had shared with her dead, — where she had
heard his last words, and kissed the cold lips when
they could speak no more. She made no outcry, —
why should she? Who was there to care for her
mourning, or to comfort her? But perchance her own
true dead, “from the house of the pale-faced images,”
heard the wail which only her soul uttered, and by
some celestial mystery, of us uncomprehended, brought
her comfort.
When the carriage came at last, that fair, calm face
of hers bore no trace of conflict. She went quietly
down the stairs, her long, soft, mourning robes trailing
after her, and was greeted cordially by Mrs. Livingstone,
who sat in the coupé. So her new life began.
If Mrs. Livingstone was prepared for any effusion of
grief on Marian's part, and sympathy on her own, she
was certainly disappointed. Miss Eyre was not one to
wear her sorrow upon her sleeve, or shed her tears in
company. She was quiet and graceful and dignified as
ever. The most expansive of women could have found
no excuse for falling upon her neck and weeping over
her. So they made talk about indifferent matters, as
people do in society, and by the time they had reached
Murray Hill their further attitude toward each other
was mutually well understood.
With infinite tact Marian slipped into her place in the
household. She never failed to perform conscientiously
the duties which could justly be expected from her;
but also she never put herself for a moment in the position
that she was securing for her growing daughters advantages
in certain directions such as she could procure for
them in no other way, but she also knew perfectly well
that Miss Eyre would remain under her roof no longer
than the position was made agreeable to her.
Agreeable in a certain way it was at present, — as
much so, at any rate, as any home among unloving
strangers could be made to this proud, tender girl, who
had known nothing but love all her life, for whom the
heart of her dead had been always so true and so warm.
Her grief never came to her lips in words, or overflowed
her eyelids, but there were times when the orphaned
heart rent the very heavens with cries which no human
ear heard, and reached out into the infinite spaces as if
by the very force of its desire it could wrench back
from them the dear old love.
Soon Lent began, — the cessation of parties and
operas, at which Marian, in her deep mourning garments,
had not assisted, and the inauguration of quiet,
small dinners and high teas. At these lesser gatherings
Miss Eyre was present; and the admiration of more
than one man made Mrs. Livingstone fear lest she might
possibly lose her fair inmate unfortunately soon; until,
seeing the cold sweetness with which all advances and
attentions were alike received, this fear gave place to a
new one.
Tom Livingstone was the darling of his mother's
heart, and the pride of her eyes; and Tom Livingstone
was coming home in June. The only son among a
in the home circle, and had borne his honors loftily,
after the manner of men. There were good things about
him certainly, though he was not the hero into which
his feminine worshippers had exalted him. He was
handsome, in that young, haughty, unchecked manhood
of his. He had no vices. Culture had made the most
of a mind naturally shrewd and sensible rather than
highly intellectual. Travel had developed his taste and
stimulated his imagination, until really there was a
good deal of charm about Tom Livingstone.
His mother remembered with a little secret dismay
that June was near at hand, and that he had met the
Eyres in Florence two years ago, and written home
some very extravagant letters about Marian. What
would be the result when he came back and found this
“rare, pale maiden” domesticated under his own roof?
She gave this girl, whom she had seen letting brilliant
opportunities slip by her so coolly, credit for disinterestedness.
If she smiled on Tom it would be because
she loved him; but what girl could help loving Tom if
he tried to make her? What if he should try? What
could be done or said? Miss Eyre was a gentlewoman,
— as well born and bred as any Livingstone of them
all, — his cousin by too many removes, moreover, to
have the ghost of an objection conjured out of the
relationship.
She knew by experience that Tom was ill to drive;
and she knew also that he must marry money, or make
a vast social descent from the family scale of living.
nine portions, could not make any of his heirs rich,
as Mrs. Livingstone was accustomed to reckon riches.
Tom must mate money with money, or come down in
the world grievously. She perceived that she had
done a very indiscreet thing in setting a snare for his
feet with this pretty, portionless temptation; but she
did not so clearly see her way out of the position, so she
waited for the future with what patience she could, and
a daily prayer that Miss Eyre's heart might be touched
by some one else before the conquering hero came.
Marian herself, meantime, went on with her life
patiently but wearily, and quite unconscious of these
speculations about her. This living without the ceaseless
tenderness which had been her daily food so long
begat a hunger of the heart so intense that it seemed
to her sometimes as if it could not be borne; but she
was never once tempted by it to feed on the husks of a
love for which her own heart held no response, which
attracted her only by what it promised, though of such
opportunities she had more than one. But her loneliness
wrought into her manner something gentler and
more appealing than she was aware.
Mr. Upjohn felt this change on the occasions when
he called to render an account of his stewardship,
though he did not gather from it any hope. He never
thought of trying to persuade her to revoke his sentence,
which he had so well understood to be final. Possibly
a bolder and more self-confident man might have
caught a hint from her mood, and stormed her heart
after all, have cared to hold what he had been forced
to win by storm. It was, however, certain that she
was strongly drawn toward him in these interviews,
though by no attempts of his own. He was so true,
where all else seemed hollow; so earnest, where all
others seemed formal; so devoted to her interests, that
she felt at last that the man whom she had begun
by regarding simply as her father's friend had become
now her own personal property, — only her friend, it
is true, but at the same time her only friend.
He had certainly met with excellent success in her
service. Week after week substantial sums of money
were transferred to her banking account, as one rare
and costly article of her father's collection after another
was disposed of at a just and generous valuation.
What means he took to bring about these sales, or
who purchased the articles, she never inquired. Having
once given the matter into his hands, she cared to
hear no particulars, and she never once went to the
salesrooms. Having once gone through the parting with
these household gods of hers, she did not care to renew
the pain.
In June the family went to their summer home on
the North River; and soon after this Tom came.
There were a good many fine traits in his character.
He was direct, straightforward, honorable, and in earnest,
though he was no flower of knighthood, no
miracle of constancy. If he loved a woman, and his
love were returned, it was in him to love long and
for the fair woman who was not fair for him. Neither
himself nor his kindred, however, had suspected this
healthy, elastic, recuperative power of his healthy,
elastic nature. He was just a hearty, generous, well-cultured
American gentleman, — as fine a type, too,
when thorough-bred, as one is likely to find, — clear-eyed,
quick-witted, and courteous.
He was about Marian's age, familiar with her
best-loved haunts in the Old World, and an old acquaintance
in the days when she had been happiest. It
was very natural that his coming should give her pleasure,
and she showed it in the frankest, most unreserved
way. Talking with him, she felt herself more at home
than she had been before since her father's death.
She brightened into her own softly radiant self, — a fascinating
creature, with her pure, proud face, her red,
smiling lips, her dusky, drooping hair, and the eyes
which changed with every thought, took a new color
with every mood.
The young hero in Panama hat and Magenta necktie
lowered his colors before her. She had swayed his
fancy curiously in their few meetings in the old days,
and he had never forgotten her. But now her graver
sweetness stole into his heart, and he was ready to offer
her the half of his kingdom.
She had been so used in her father's time to cordial
friendship and free companionship with men, — friendship
touched often with chivalry, but never warming
into love, — that she went on, unconsciously enough, in
leading her. They rode and drove together, or passed
long summer twilights hanging in a boat 'twixt crimson
sky and crimson river, and Marian had not enough of
ordinary young-ladyhood about her to guess where it
all was tending.
Quite unintentionally, it was Mrs. Livingstone who
opened her eyes. Going one day past the door of
that lady's morning-room she heard the words: —
“It is true that Marian is all which you say, but it
is equally true that you cannot afford the luxury of
marrying her.”
She hurried on instantly, with glowing cheeks. It
was all plain now. She had been blind. Tom loved
her, and had been trying to let her see it, and taking
encouragement from her frank, free manner, while she
had never once guessed his meaning. She smiled a
little over Mrs. Livingstone's notions of poverty. To
say nothing of the hundred thousand likely to come by
and by, Tom had fifty thousand of his own, now; and
on an income less than that would yield what happy
years of pleasant wandering she and her father had
known. If she loved him, certainly his mother's opposition,
based solely on the question of finances,
would not deter her from marrying him, or feeling that
he had a right to please himself. The question became
at once whether she might, could, would, or should
love him, — a potential of which the indicative was
hard to determine. She really did not know, herself.
If you, my reader, are so clear-headed, so subtile in
about such a matter for a moment, turn compassionately
this leaf which reveals to you Marian in her
indecision, her poverty of self-knowledge; but, for my
part, I think most girls who have never had an accepted
lover, or been accustomed to speculate about love and
marriage, would have an epoch of similar uncertainty
at the instant when a most agreeable, eligible, and
altogether unexceptionable friend should stand before
them suddenly transformed into an expectant suitor.
That night the whole story of Tom's hopes and
fears came out. He took courage, perhaps, from a new
shyness in Marian's manner. At any rate, he told her
how dear she was and always must be, and then waited
for her answer.
“I am portionless,” she said, gravely. “If there were
no question about any thing else, I think your family
would not approve the marriage for that reason.”
“They would get over that,” he protested, eagerly.
“They all think you are perfection. They only fear
that I am too good-for-nothing a fellow to help myself,
and not well enough off to make you comfortable.
But I could do any thing, with you for my inspiration;
and in this one greatest thing of my life I must please
myself. If you can love me, Marian, nothing else is
wanting.”
She looked at him, — his handsome, eager face so
full of longing tenderness for her, so lonely, so sorely
needing it, — young, strong, fond, ready to do and
dare for her sake. Surely she must love him, — surely
Marian was romantic; that is to say, she had high
ideals. Love to her meant a grand, heroic something,
which would be strong and steadfast through life, and
outlast death. Would all her skies be dark, she asked
herself, her days empty, if the shining of Tom Livingstone's
eyes were quenched? Was he so much to her
that without him the rest of life would be barren?
Her heart uttered no affirmative, and yet she had been
accustomed to think that this and nothing less than
this was love. The “Yes” which had almost sprung
to her lips shrank back again, and she said, instead,
very humbly: —
“I dare not answer you, for I do not know myself.
It seems to me that in marriage there is no half-way.
One must be ineffably happy or ineffably miserable. I
would not trust myself to be any man's wife unless
I was sure, beyond a question, that I loved him with
all my being. I cannot tell whether I could ever love
you like that, for I never thought of you, until to-day,
as other than my pleasantest of friends.”
He ventured on no prayers or protestations, for the
quiet solemnity of her mood awed him. The matter
which she looked at with such serious eyes took on
new sacredness for him. He dared not be responsible
for this woman's happiness, unless indeed she could
love him so entirely that there would be no doubt
about his making it. So he told her, gravely and
gently, that he would wait for her to understand herself;
and though, whatever her decision might be, he
or accuse her of having held out to him any false
hopes.
Then they sat silent in the evening stillness. He
had hoped to have that graceful head of hers upon his
shoulder, to kiss the serious, smiling lips of his promised
wife, to be happy in her sweet and frankly given
love. Instead, he sat a little apart from her side, with
a distance which seemed like the sweep of eternity
between their souls. Would he ever come more near?
In the weeks that followed Marian grew thin with
anxiety. She meant to do right, at whatever cost;
but it was so hard to know what right was, to evolve
certainty from the chaos of her emotions. There was
so much to incline her heart toward him in his handsome,
graceful, courageous youth, in his ardent yet
reverent devotion to herself. Sometimes she thought
she could ask no more; but slowly a conviction
grew on her that in him was not the strength on
which she longed to lean. She might be his inspiration,
as he said, — he never could be hers. She
must look at him with level eyes, and it was in her
nature to long to look up. The daughter of Reginald
Eyre, “Puritan Bohemian,” was not likely to have
any religious cant about her; but she had strong
spiritual needs. A steadfast sense of personal responsibility
to a personal God underlaid her life and made
it solemn. Tom Livingstone was worthy of a better
love than hers, she was ready to grant; but, when she
began to think of seeking her rest and shelter in him for
of his lacked something without which she could never
be satisfied.
At last she told him so, with that sad tenderness a
good woman always feels for the man who has loved her
in vain.
True to his promise, he accepted her decision, and
held her blameless. He only said once, with despair in
his eyes: —
“If you could but have loved me, O Marian!”
And she answered, in a low voice, which seemed to
him sadder than any wail: —
“Oh, if I could! Don't you see how desolate I am?”
If the family had known any thing of this probation
and its results they never alluded to it before Marian;
but Mrs. Livingstone's manner was most cordially gracious
just after this final decision; though she made only
feeble attempts to combat Miss Eyre's resolution to go
back to New York early in September and go into
lodgings. Marian offered no explanations, — she was
not addicted to them, — she merely announced that she
felt it desirable to make different arrangements for the
next winter, and must go early to town in order to
perfect them.
Then she wrote to Mr. Upjohn. Somehow in every
difficulty it seemed very natural to turn to him, — he
was so strong and so self-reliant, so eminently to be relied
upon. She felt no hesitation about asking him to secure
her suitable apartments, — a little parlor and sleeping-room
in some quiet and not too expensive boarding-house.
she had quite a little provision for the future, and could
afford herself a space of leisure in which to map out
that future to her liking. She had somewhat changed
her ideas about teaching. She thought now that she
could without difficulty make up from among her acquaintances
a class of young ladies who had finished
school, but who would be glad to read the modern languages
under her tuition; and she much preferred the
independence this course offered to a longer residence
beneath the Livingstone roof-tree. Tom alone was
urgent that she should remain under his mother's protection.
He was going abroad again at once; and he
should be so much more happy and at ease if he left
her, as he found her, there. Mrs. Livingstone seconded
him courteously; but I think Marian's presence was
somewhat embarrassing to her at this juncture. However
that may have been, her courtesy and her son's
entreaties were alike met with polite but firm decision.
Early in September Marian removed to her Fourteenth
Street apartments; and the next week Tom Livingstone's
name was registered among the passengers of the
“Arago.”
Miss Eyre felt a strong, sweet delight in her self-sovereignty
as she went into her pleasant parlor and looked
around her. In one corner stood a Psyche, which
surely she remembered; in another a wingéd Hope, by
some disciple of Canova. One picture, a face of Saint
Catherine, with eyes full of courage and of faith, lips
strong for prayer and tender for praise, — hung over
It was like coming home to come back to these old, beloved
objects; but she did not understand their being
in her possession. She felt sure that Mr. Upjohn would
come to inquire after her comfort, and she waited for
an explanation from him impatiently. When at last he
came, and her question followed her greeting, he only
smiled and said: —
“I thought it would not be good for you to have too
much money. The rest had sold so readily that I ventured
to keep these for your own pleasure.”
He was repaid for all his trouble by her bright, cordial
thanks. Somehow they had grown singularly good
friends since the night when he gave up all hope of
their ever being more than friends. She felt very near
to him, very comfortable with him, this evening, as
she told him over all her plans, profiting by his clear
sagacity, made hopeful by his hopefulness for her,
catching the contagion of his strength. She looked
at the rugged manliness of his face, and found something
noble in it, which she wondered that she had
failed to discover before. She was not quite desolate,
surely, since she had this one friend, who had loved
her father, whom her father had loved, and who, she
felt now, would be her friend for all time.
She had no difficulty in arranging her class upon
satisfactory terms. She laughed cheerfully with Mr.
Upjohn, who came to see her as often as once a week,
about being an independent, self-supporting woman;
and she found an interest in her regular task, which
her.
Sometimes, as the winter passed on and she saw more
and more of Mr. Upjohn, finding in him always the
same cordial, earnest, but unlover-like friend, she began
to wonder whether he had really ever loved her at all,
or only been moved by sympathy in her distress on
that one night which she so well remembered. Did
he remember it as well, unconscious as he always
seemed? She began to long to know. She recalled
his words: —
“If I had not loved you first I should not have dared
to pity you;” and, knowing that he was truth itself,
she felt that he must have cared for her then, though
his strong manliness had helped him to overcome it so
utterly now.
She believed honestly that she did not regret the lost
opportunity, but every week she saw more clearly how
much he was to her, even as a friend, which Tom Livingstone
never could have been. Was it that, after
all, the world's workers must ever be nobler than the
world's idlers; or that a larger outlook on life had
given him a wider horizon; or that in his nature, as
God made it, there was capacity for nobler issues than
in the other's? She could not tell. She had only a
subtile consciousness that, let her soul take wings as it
might, in no height of her aspiring could she ever soar
beyond his capacity to stand beside her.
She was still too shy in her confessions to herself, or
perhaps too wanting in self-knowledge, to fully divine
he were to ask the old question over again; and he, on
his part, understood himself so well, and was habitually
so sure of his own emotions, that it never occurred
to him to doubt whether Marian was equally self-poised,
— whether her “no” once spoken must needs be “no”
for all time. He was not at all likely, therefore, to give
her an opportunity to change her mind. But just here
an accidental turn of a conversation, a lucky chance, —
I speak after the usual fashion, but I believe in a heavenly
and special Providence, — occurred to set them
both right.
He came in one evening, and found her warming her
slender fingers by the fire blaze. She looked so lovely,
so homelike, so entirely gentle and womanly, that,
despite the seal he had long ago set upon his wishes,
his heart went out toward her in a great wave of love
and longing. But he only spoke to her with the calm
friendliness of his usual manner.
“I am cold,” she said. “I have just been to Murray
Hill to make a call of congratulation. The second Miss
Livingstone is soon to be married to Colonel George
Seabright.”
“Seabright! Why, he is as old as I am, and Maud
Livingstone is very young, is she not?”
“Nineteen last autumn; but what is that if she loves
him, and I think she does.”
“But do you think it no sacrifice when a woman loves
and marries a man older than herself?”
“I think no marriage is a sacrifice when a woman
loves.”
Some glint in her eyes inspired him. He looked into
her face.
“I think you felt differently once,” he said, slowly.
“I was not very well worth loving in those days. I
neither understood myself nor any one else.”
“But you do understand yourself now, and I do not
think you have changed your mind.”
“If I have not, I presume you have,” she said,
archly.
Both her hands were in his in a moment. Pride,
passion, power, all looked together from his eyes, and
then were succeeded by and lost in a strong, pure tenderness.
“You will,” — that was the first impulse, — “I mean,
will you, Marian, will you give up your class at the
end of this quarter?”
“For what?” the bright archness lingered in her
tone, but her pale cheeks flushed with the dawning of
a new day, and her eyes were too shy to meet those
which sought them.
“To be my wife.”
Was it the same Marian Eyre whom he had wooed
in vain before whose hands staid in his now so willingly,
whose lips he kissed with the glad audacity of a happy
lover?
“The patient are the strong,” a tender ballad says;
but certainly in this instance the strong was not the
patient. Perhaps Mr. Upjohn thought that a man who
had waited thirty-six years for his happiness had waited
long enough. At any rate, he hurried Marian with her
the briefest possible space. There was a little talk
about a bridal journey, but that she put aside.
“I would rather go home,” she said, honestly.
“You know I never had any home, never in all my
life.”
So, not at all reluctant at the change of programme,
he busied himself in making home ready for her.
She had been used to relying on him so long, in
matters of business, that for him to assume all responsibility
seemed natural and proper; and it never occurred
to her to wonder that in these arrangements of
his he neither consulted her taste nor asked any assistance
from her. She went on quietly with her own
preparations, more simple, indeed, than they would
have been once, but not without a certain distinguished
elegance, lacking which Marian would not have been
herself.
At last, one afternoon, they were quietly married in
church, and drove away together to their home in a
pleasant up-town street.
When she stepped into the hall, with her husband's
welcome spoken low and tender in her ear, Marian
began to recognize some old acquaintances, — certain
bronze knights in armor whom she saw first, years ago,
in the shop of a noted Roman fabricant; a cuckoo
clock on a bracket of Geneva wood-carving; an antique
table with a curious vase upon it.
Watching her face, Mr. Upjohn led her through the
house. Here a soft-eyed picture hung; there a shape
cotta told its old story. In her own room, her Hope
and her Psyche and her soft-eyed Saint Catherine kept.
watch and ward. They had been removed while she
was at church to the place appointed for them. Everywhere
was some beloved relic of the old days, — not one
of her treasures missing.
“You bought them all?” she asked, at last.
“Yes, dear; with no thought or hope, then, of this
happy, happy day, — but because, even then, I loved
you too well to see any thing you had helped to select,
or care for, pass into the hands of strangers.”
“You know I cannot thank you,” she began, but
just there she broke down utterly, a very woman in
her happiness, and wept such tears as all true women
who have loved happily can understand. Round her
were all her household gods, and she had found, at last,
her rest and her home.
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