University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
DESCRIBING CERTAIN TROUBLES OF MR. WOODBURY.

When they returned to Mrs. Waldo's parlor, the conversation
naturally ran upon the ceremony which had just been solemnized
and the two chief actors in it. There was but one
judgment in regard to Bute, and his wife, also, had gained
steadily in the good opinion of all ever since her betrothal
beside the sick-bed.

“I had scarcely noticed her at all, before it happened,” said
Woodbury, “for she impressed me as a shallow, ridiculous,
little creature—one of those unimportant persons who seem
to have no other use than to fill up the cracks of society. But
one little spark of affection gives light and color to the most
insipid character. Who could have suspected the courage and
earnestness of purpose which took her to Lakeside, when the
fever had possession of the house? Since then I have heartily
respected her. I have almost come to the conclusion that no
amount of triumphant intellect is worth so much reverence as
we spontaneously pay to any simple and genuine emotion,
common to all human beings.”

“I am glad to hear you say so!” exclaimed Mrs. Waldo.
“Because then you will never fail in a proper respect to our
sex. Hannah, do you remember, when you lent me Longfellow's
Poems, how much I liked that line about `affection?'
I don't often quote, Mr. Woodbury, because I'm never sure of
getting it exactly right; but it's this:

“And I believe all men of sense do.”

“I cannot indorse the sentiment, precisely in those words,”
Woodbury answered. “I esteem both affection and intellect
in woman, but the first quality must be predominant. Its absence
in man may now and then be tolerated, but to woman it
is indispensable.”

“Might not woman make the same requirement of man?”
Hannah Thurston suddenly asked.

“Certainly,” he answered, “and with full justice. That is
one point wherein no one can dispute the equal rights of the
sexes. But the capacity to love is a natural quality, and there
is no true affection where the parties are continually measuring
their feelings to see which loves the most. Bute and his wife
will be perfectly happy so long as they are satisfied with the
simple knowledge of giving and receiving.”

“That's exactly my idea!” cried Mrs. Waldo, in great
delight. “Husband, do you recollect the promises we made
to each other on our wedding-day? There's never a wedding
happens but I live it all over again. We wore Navarino bonnets
then, and sleeves puffed out with bags of down, and you
would lay your head on one of them, as we drove along, just
like Bute and Carrie to-day, on our way to Father Waldo's.
I said then that I'd never doubt you, never take back an atom
of my trust in you—and I've kept my word from that day to
this, and I'll keep it in this world and the next!”

Here Mrs. Waldo actually burst into tears, but smiled
through them, like the sudden rush of a stream from which
spray and rainbow are born at the same instant. “I am a
silly old creature,” she said: “don't mind me. Half of my
heart has been in Carrie's breast all morning, and I knew I
should make a fool of myself before the day was out.”

“You're a good wife,” said Mr. Waldo, patting her on the
head as if she had been a little girl.

Hannah Thurston rose, with a wild, desperate feeling in her
heart. A pitiless hand seemed to clutch and crush it in her
bosom. So, she thought, some half-drowned sailor, floating
on the plank of a wreck, must feel when the sail that promised

him deliverance, tacks with the wind and slides out of his
horizon. The waves of life, which had hitherto only stirred
for her with the grand tidal pulse which moves in their depths,
now heaved threateningly and dashed their bitter salt in her
face at every turn. Whence came these ominous disturbances?
What was there in the happy marriage of two
ignorant and contented souls, to impress her with such vague,
intolerable foreboding? With the consciousness of her inability
to suppress it came a feeling of angry shame at the
deceitfulness of her own strength. But perhaps—and this
was a gleam of hope—what she experienced was the disappointed
protest of an instinct common to every human being,
and which must therefore be felt and conquered by others
as well.

She stole a glance at Woodbury. His face was abstracted
but it expressed no signs of a struggle akin to her own. The
large brown eyes were veiled with the softness of a tender,
subdued longing; the full, regular lips, usually closed with all
the firmness and decision of his character in their line of
junction, were slightly parted, and the corners drooped with
an expression unutterably sad. Even over cheeks and brow,
a soft, warm breath seemed to have blown. He appeared to
her, suddenly, under a new aspect. She saw the misty shadow
which the passion of a man's heart casts before it, and turned
away her eyes in dread of a deeper revelation.

As she took leave of the Waldos, he also rose and gave her
his hand. The tender cloud of sadness had not entirely passed
from his face, and she avoided meeting his gaze. Whether it
was the memory of a lost, or the yearning for an absent love,
which had thus betrayed itself, she felt that it gave him the
temporary power to discern something of the emotion which
had mastered her. Had he done so, she never could have
met him again. To this man, of all men, she would continue
to assert her equality. Whatever weaknesses others might
discover, he at least should only know her in her strength.

The rest of the day passed rather tamely to Woodbury, and

as he rode down the valley during the sweet and solemn
coming-on of the twilight, he was conscious of a sensation
which he had not experienced since the days of his early trials
in New York. He well remembered the melancholy Sabbath
evenings, when he walked along the deserted North River
piers, watching the purple hills of Staten Island deepen into
gray as the sunset faded—when all that he saw, the quiet
vessels, the cold bosom of the bay, the dull red houses on the
shores and even the dusky heaven overhead, was hollow and
unreal—when there was no joy in the Present and no promise
in the Future. The same hopeless chill came over him now.
All the life had gone out of the landscape; its colors were
cold and raw, the balmy tonic odor of the golden-rods and
meadow marigolds seemed only designed to conceal some
rank odor of decay, and the white front of Lakeside greeted
him with the threat of a prison rather than the welcome of a
home.

On the evening of the second day Bute returned, as delighted
to get back as if he had made a long journey. The
light of his new life still lay upon him and gave its human
transfiguration to his face. Woodbury studied the change, unconsciously
to its subject, with a curiosity which he had never
before acknowledged in similar cases. He saw the man's supreme
content in the healthy clearness of his eye, in the light,
elastic movement of his limbs, and in the lively satisfaction with
which he projected plans of labor, in which he was to perform
the principal part. He had taken a fresh interest in life, and
was all courage and activity. In Carrie, on the other hand,
the trustful reliance she had exhibited appeared now to have
assumed the form of a willing and happy submission. She
recognized the ascendency of sex, in her husband, without
being able to discern its nature. Thus Bute's plain common-sense
suddenly took the form of rough native intellect in her
eyes, and confessing (to herself, only) her own deficiency,
her affection was supported by the pride of her respect. Her
old aunt had whispered to her, before they left Tiberius:

“Carrline, you're a lucky gal. Y'r husband's a proper nice
man as ever I see, and so well set-up, too. You'll both be
well to do, afore you die, if you take keer o' what you've got,
and lay up what it brings in. I shouldn't wonder if you was
able to send your boys to Collidge.”

This suggestion opened a new field for her ambition. The
thought seemed still a scarcely permitted liberty, and she did
not dare to look at her face in the glass when it passed
through her mind; but the mother's instinct, which lnrks, unsuspected,
in every maiden's breast, boldly asserted its existence
to the young wife, and she began to dream of the
future reformers or legislators whom it might be her fortunate
lot to cradle. Her nature, as we have already more
than once explained, was so shallow that it could not contain
more than one set of ideas at a time. The acquired affectations
by which she had hitherto been swayed, being driven
from the field, her new faith in Bute possessed her wholly,
and she became natural by the easiest transition in the world.
Characters like hers rarely have justice done to them. Generally,
they are passed over as too trivial for serious inspection:
their follies and vanities are so evident and transparent,
that the petit verre is supposed to be empty, when at the
bottom may lie as potent a drop of the honey of human love,
as one can find in a whole huge ox-horn of mead.

Now began for Woodbury a life very different from what
he had anticipated. Bute took possession of his old stewardship
with the joyous alacrity of a man doubly restored to the
world, and Mrs. Carrie Wilson fidgeted about from morning
until night, fearful lest some neglected duty in her department
might be seen. The careful respect which Woodbury exercised
towards her gave her both courage and content in her
new position, while it preserved a certain distance between
them. She soon learned, not only to understand but to share
Bute's exalted opinion of his master. In this respect, Woodbury's
natural tact was unerring. Without their knowledge,
he guided those who lived about him to the exact places,

which he desired them to fill. In any European household
such matters would have settled themselves without trouble;
but in America, where the vote of the hired neutralizes that
of the hirer, and both have an equal chance of reaching the
Presidential chair—where the cook and chambermaid may
happen to wear more costly bonnets than their mistress, and
to have a livelier interest in the current fashions, it requires
no little skill to harmonize the opposite features of absolute
equality and actual subjection. Too great a familiarity, according
to the old proverb, breeds contempt; too strict an
assertion o the relative positions, breeds rebellion.

The man of true cultivation, who may fraternize at will
with the humblest and rudest of the human race, reserves,
nevertheless, the liberty of selecting his domestic associates.
Woodbury insisted on retaining his independence to this extent,
not from an assumption of superiority, but from a resistance
to the dictation of the uncultivated in every thing that
concerned his habits of life. He would not have hesitated to
partake of a meal in old Melinda's cottage, but it was always
a repugnant sensation to him, on visiting the Merryfields,
when an Irish laborer from the field came in his shirt-sleeves,
or a strapping mulatto woman, sweating from the kitchen fire,
to take their places at the tea-table. Bute's position was
above that of a common laborer, and Woodbury, whose long
Indian life had not accustomed him to prefer lonely to social
meals, was glad to have the company of his wedded assistants
at breakfast and dinner, and this became the ordinary habit;
but he was careful to preserve a margin sufficient for his own
freedom and convenience. Carrie, though making occasional
mistakes, brought so much good-will to the work, that the
housekeeping went on smoothly enough to a bachelor's eyes.
If Mrs. Blake's favorable judgment had reference to this aspect
of the case, she was sufficiently near the truth, but in another
respect she certainly made a great mistake.

It was some days before Woodbury would confess to himself
the disturbance which the new household, though so conveniently

regulated, occasioned him. The sight of Bute's
clear morning face, the stealthy glance of delight with which
he followed the movements of his beaming little wife, as she
prepared the breakfast-table, the eager and absurd manœuvres
which she perpetrated to meet him for just one second (long
enough for the purpose), outside the kitchen-door as he returned
from the field—all these things singularly annoyed
Woodbury. The two were not openly demonstrative in their
nuptial content, but it was constantly around them like an
atmosphere. A thousand tokens, so minute that alone they
meant nothing, combined to express the eternal joy which
man possesses in woman, and woman in man. It pervaded
the mansion of Lakeside from top to bottom, like one of those
powerful scents which cling to the very walls and cannot be
washed out. When he endeavored to avoid seeing it or surmising
its existence, in one way, it presented itself to him in
another. When, as it sometimes happened, either of the
parties became conscious that he or she had betrayed a little
too much tenderness, the simulated indifference, the unnatural
gravity which followed, made the bright features of their new
world all the more painfully distinct by the visible wall which
it built up, temporarily, between him and them. He was
isolated in a way which left him no power of protest. They
were happy, and his human sympathy forbade him to resent it;
they were ignorant and uncultivated, in comparison to himself,
and his pride could give him no support; they were sincere,
and his own sincerity of character was called upon to recognize
it; their bond was sacred, and demanded his reverence.
Why, then, should he be disturbed by that which enlisted all
his better qualities, and peremptorily checked the exercise of
the opposite? Why, against all common-sense, all gentle instincts,
all recognition of the loftiest human duty, should he
in this new Paradise of Love, be the envious serpent rather
than the protecting angel?

The feeling was clearly there, whatever might be its explanation.
There were times when he sought to reason it away

as the imaginary jealousy of a new landed proprietor, who
presents to himself the idea of ownership in every possible
form in order to enjoy it the more thoroughly. Lakeside
was his, to the smallest stone inside his boundary fence,
and the mossiest shingle on the barn-roof; but the old house
—the vital heart of the property—now belonged more to
others than to himself. The dead had signed away their interest
in its warmth and shelter, but it was haunted in every
chamber by the ghosts of the living. The new-made husband
and wife filled it with a feeling of home, in which he had no
part. They had usurped his right, and stolen the comfort
which ought to belong to him alone. It was their house, and
he the tenant. As he rode down the valley, in the evenings,
and from the bridge over Roaring Brook glanced across the
meadows to the sunny knoll, the love, which was not his own,
looked at him from the windows glimmering in the sunset and
seemed to say: “You would not ask me to be your guest, but
I am here in spite of you!”

Woodbury, however, though his nature was softened by the
charm of a healthy sentiment, was not usually imaginative. He
was not the man to endure, for any length of time, a mental or
moral unrest, without attempting to solve it. His natural powers
of perception, his correct instincts, his calm judgment, and
his acquired knowledge of life, enabled him to interpret himself
as well as others. He never shrank from any revelation
which his own heart might make to him. If a wound smarted,
he thrust the probe to the bottom with a steady hand. The
pain was none the less, afterwards, perhaps, but he could estimate
when it would heal. He possessed, moreover, the virtue,
so often mistaken for egotism, of revering in himself the aspirations,
the sacrifices, and the sanctities which he revered in
other men. Understanding, correctly, his nature as a man,
his perceptions were not easily confused. There are persons
whose moral nature is permanently unhinged by the least
license: there are others who may be led, by circumstance,
into far graver aberrations, and then swing back, without

effort, to their former integrity. He belonged to the latter
class.

It was not long, therefore, before he had surveyed the whole
ground of his disturbance. Sitting, late into the night, in his
library, he would lay down his book beside the joss-stick,
which smouldered away into a rod of white ashes in its boat,
and quietly deliberate upon his position. He recalled every
sensation of annoyance or impatience, not disguising its injustice
or concealing from himself its inherent selfishness, while
on the other hand he admitted the powerful source from which
it sprang. He laid no particular blame to his nature, from the
fact that it obeyed a universal law, and deceived himself by no
promise of resistance. Half the distress of the race is caused
by their fighting battles which can never be decided. Woodbury's
knowledge simply taught him how to conceal his trouble,
and that was all he desired. He knew that the ghost which
had entered Lakeside must stay there until he should bring
another ghost to dislodge it.

Where was the sweet phantom to be found? If, in some
impatient moment, he almost envied Bute the possession of the
attached, confiding, insipid creature, in whom the former was
so unspeakably content, his good sense told him, the next,
that the mere capacity to love was not enough for the needs
of a life. That which is the consecration of marriage does not
alone constitute marriage. Of all the women whom he knew,
but one could offer him the true reciprocal gifts. Towards
her, he acknowledged himself to be drawn by an interest much
stronger than that of intellect—an interest which might grow,
if he allowed it, into love. The more he saw or learned of
this woman, the more admirably pure and noble his heart
acknowledged her to be. He had come to look upon her errors
with a gentle pity, which taught him to avoid assailing them,
whenever the assault might give her pain. Was the hard,
exacting manner in which she claimed delusive rights—not,
indeed, specially for herself, but for all her sex—the result of
her position as a champion of those rights, or was it an integral

part of herself? This was the one important question
which it behooved him to solve. To what extent was the false
nature superimposed upon the true woman beneath it?

Supposing, even, that he should come to love her, and, improbable
as it might seem, should awaken an answering love
in her heart, would she unite her fate, unconditionally, to his?
Would she not demand, in advance, security for some unheard-of
domestic liberty, as a partial compensation for the legal
rights which were still withheld? One of her fellow-championesses
had recently married, and had insisted on retaining her
maiden name. He had read, in the newspapers, a contract
drawn up and signed by the two, which had disgusted him by
its cold business character. He shuddered as the idea of
Hannah Thurston presenting a similar contract for his signature,
crossed his mind. “No!” he cried, starting up: “it is
incredible!” Nothing in all his intercourse with her suggested
such a suspicion. Even in the grave dignity of her
manner she was entirely woman. The occasional harshness
of judgment or strength of prejudice which repelled him, were
faults, indeed, but faults that would melt away in the light of
a better knowledge of herself. She was at present in a position
of fancied antagonism, perhaps not wholly by her own
action. The few men who agreed with her gave her false ideas
of their own sex: the others whom she knew misunderstood
and misrepresented her. She thus stood alone, bearing the
burden of aspirations, which, however extravagant, were splendidly
earnest and unselfish.

Mrs. Blake's words came back to Woodbury's memory and
awakened a vague confidence in his own hopes. She was too
clear-eyed a woman to be easily mistaken in regard to one of
her sex. Her bantering proposition might have been intended
to convey a serious counsel. “A strong woman can only be
overcome by superior strength.” But how should this strength
(supposing he possessed it) be exercised? Should he crush
her masculine claims under a weight of argument? Impossible:
if she were to be convinced at all, it must be by the

knowledge that comes through love. There was another form
of strength, he thought—a conquering magnetism of presence,
a force of longing which supplants will, a warmth of passion
which disarms resistance—but such strength, again, is simply
Love, and he must love before he could exercise it. The question,
therefore, was at last narrowed to this: should he cherish
the interest he already felt until it grew to the passion he prefigured,
and leave to fate its return, free as became a woman
or fettered with suspicious provisions?

This, however, was a question not so easy to decide. Were
he sure of exciting a reciprocal interest, the venture, he felt,
would be justified to his own heart; but nothing in her manner
led him to suspect that she more than tolerated him—in
distinction to her former hostile attitude—and there is no man
of gentle nature but shrinks from the possibility of a failure.
“Ah,” said he, “I am not so young as I thought. A young
man would not stop to consider, and doubt, and weight probabilities.
If I fail, my secret is in sacred keeping; if I win, I
must win every thing. Am I not trying to keep up a youthful
faculty of self-illusion which is lost forever, by demanding an
ideal perfection in woman? No, no! I must cease to cheat
myself: I must not demand a warmer flame than I can give.”

Sometimes he attempted to thrust the subject from his
mind. The deliberations in which he had indulged seemed to
him cold, material, and unworthy the sanction of love. They
had the effect, however, of making Hannah Thurston's image
an abiding guest in his thoughts, and the very familiarity with
his own doubts rendered them less formidable than at first. A
life crowned with the bliss he passionately desired, might reward
the trial. If it failed, his future could not be more barren
and lonely than it now loomed before him: how barren,
how lonely, every sight of Bute's face constantly resuggested.

The end of it all was a determination to seek Hannah
Thurston's society—to court a friendly intimacy, in which he
should not allow his heart to be compromised. So far he
might go with safety to himself, and in no case, according to

his views, could there be danger to her. His acquaintance
with the widow, which had been kept up by an occasional
brief visit, and the present condition of the latter's health, gave
him all the opportunity he needed. The Catawba grapes were
already ripening on the trellises at Lakeside, and he would
take the earliest bunches to the widow's cottage.

The impression, in Ptolemy society, of a strong antagonism
between himself and Hannah Thurston, was very general.
Even Mrs. Waldo, whose opportunities of seeing both were
best of all, fancied that their more cordial demeanor towards
each other, in their later interviews, was only a tacitly understood
armistice. Woodbury was aware of this impression, and
determined not to contradict it for the present.

Thus, tormented from without and within, impelled by an
outcry of his nature that would not be silenced, without consciousness
of love, he took the first step, knowing that it might
lead him to love a woman whose ideas were repugnant to all
his dreams of marriage and of domestic peace.