University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
JULIA'S EXPERIMENT.

In the mean time the Hopetons had left for the sea-shore,
and the two women, after a drive to Magnolia, remained
quietly on the farm. Julia employed the days in studying
Lucy with a soft, stealthy, unremitting watchfulness which
the latter could not suspect, since, in the first place, it was a
faculty quite unknown to her, and, secondly, it would have
seemed absurd because inexplicable. Neither could she
guess with what care Julia's manner and conversation were
adapted to her own. She was only surprised to find so
much earnest desire to correct faults, such artless transparency
of nature. Thus an interest quite friendly took the
place of her former repulsion of feeling, of which she began
to be sincerely ashamed.

Moreover, Julia's continual demonstration of her love for
Joseph, from which Lucy at first shrank with a delicate
tremor of the heart, soon ceased to affect her. Nay, it
rather seemed to interpose a protecting barrier between her
present and the painful memory of her past self. She began
to suspect that all regret was now conquered, and rejoiced
in the sense of strength which could only thus be made
clear to her mind. Her feeling towards Joseph became that
of a sister or a dear woman friend; there could be no harm
in cherishing it; she found a comfort in speaking to Julia
of his upright, unselfish character, his guilelessness and
kindness of heart.

The work upon the house was nearly finished, but new
and more alarming bills began to come in; and worse was
in store. There was a chimney-piece, “the loveliest ivory
veins through the green marble,” Julia said, which she had
ordered from the city; there were boxes and packages of
furniture already on hand, purchased without Joseph's
knowledge and with entire faith in the virtues of the Amaranth.
Although she still clung to that faith with a desperate
grip, the sight of the boxes did not give her the same
delight as she had felt in ordering them. She saw the necessity
of being prepared, in advance, for either alternative.
It was not in her nature to dread any scene or circumstance
of life (although she had found the appearance
of timidity very available, and could assume it admirably);
the question which perplexed her was, how to retain and
strengthen her ascendency over Joseph?

It is needless to say that the presence of Lucy Henderson
was a part of her plan, although she held a more important
service in reserve. Lucy's warm, frank expressions of
friendship for Joseph gave her great satisfaction, and she
was exhaustless in inventing ways to call them forth.

“You look quite like another person, Lucy,” she would
say; “I really think the rest has done you good.”

“I am sure of it,” Lucy answered.

“Then you must be in no hurry to leave. We must build
you up, as the doctors say; and, besides, if—if this speculation
should be unfortunate—O, I don't dare to think of
it!—there will be such a comfort to me, and I am sure to
Joseph also, in having you here until we have learned to
bear it. We should not allow our minds to dwell on it so
much, you know; we should make an exertion to hide our
disappointment in your presence, and that would be such

a help! Now you will say I am borrowing trouble, but do,
pray, make allowances for me, Lucy! Think how everything
has been kept from me that I ought to have known!”

“Of course, I will stay a little while for your sake,” Lucy
answered; “but Joseph is a man, and most men bear bad
luck easily. He would hardly thank me for condoling with
him.”

“O, no, no!” Julia cried; “he thinks everything of you!
He was so anxious for you to come here! he said to me,
`Lucy Henderson is a noble, true-hearted girl, and you will
love her at once,' as I did, Lucy, when I first saw you, but
without knowing why, as I now do.”

A warm color came into Lucy's face, but she only shook
her head and said nothing.

The two women had just risen from the breakfast-table the
next morning, when a shadow fell into the room through the
front window, and a heavy step was heard on the stone
pavement of the veranda. Julia gave a little start and
shriek, and seized Lucy's arm. The door opened and Joseph
was there. He had risen before daybreak and taken the
earliest train from the city. He had scarcely slept for two
nights; his face was stern and haggard, and the fatigue, instead
of exhausting, had only added to his excitement.

Julia sprang forward, threw her arm saround, him, and
kissed him repeatedly. He stood still and passively endured
the caress, without returning it; then, stepping forward, he
gave his hand to Lucy. She felt that it was cold and moist,
and she did not attempt to repress the quick sympathy
which came into her face and voice.

Julia guessed something of the truth instantly, and nothing
but the powerful necessity of continuing to play her part enabled
her to conceal the bitter anger which the contrast

between Joseph's greeting to her and to Lucy aroused in her
heart. She stood for a moment as if paralyzed, but in reality
to collect herself; then, approaching her husband, she stammered
forth: “O, Joseph—I'm afraid—I don't dare to ask
you what—what news you bring. You didn't write—I've
been so uneasy—and now I see from your face—that something
is wrong.”

He did not answer.

“Don't tell me all at once, if it's very bad!” she then
cried: “but, no! it's my duty to hear it, my duty to bear
it,—Lucy has taught me that,—tell me all, tell me all, this
moment!”

“You and your father have ruined me: that is all.”

“Joseph!” The word sounded like the essence of tender
protest, of heart-breaking reproach. Lucy rose quietly and
moved towards the door.

“Don't leave me, Lucy!” was Julia's appeal.

“It is better that I should go,” Lucy answered, in a faint
voice, and left the room.

“But, Joseph,” Julia resumed, with a wild, distracted air,
“why do you say such terrible things? I really do not
know what you mean. What have you learned? what have
you seen?”

“I have seen the Amaranth!”

“Well! Is there no oil?”

“O yes, plenty of oil!” he laughed; “skunk oil and
rattlesnake oil! It is one of the vilest cheats that the
Devil ever put into the minds of bad men.”

“O, poor pa!” Julia cried; “what a terrible blow to
him!”

“`Poor pa!' Yes, my discovery of the cheat is a terrible
blow to `poor pa,'—he did not calculate on its being found

out so soon. When I learned from Kanuck that all the
stock he holds was given to him for services,—that is, for
getting the money out of the pockets of innocents like myself,
—you may judge how much pity I feel for poor pa! I told
him the fact to his face, last night, and he admitted it.”

“Then,” said Julia, “if the others know nothing, he may
be able to sell his stock to-day,—his and yours; and we may
not lose much after all.”

“I should have sent you to the oil region, instead of going
myself,” Joseph answered, with a sneer. “You and Kanuck
would soon have come to terms. He offered to take my
stock off my hands, provided Iwould go back to the city
and make such a report of the speculation as he would dictate.”

“And you didn't do it?” Julia's voice rose almost to a
scream, as the words burst involuntarily from her lips.

The expression on Joseph's face showed her that she had
been rash; but the words were said, and she could only
advance, not recede.

“It is perfectly legitimate in business,” she continued.
“Every investment in the Amaranth was a venture,—every
stockholder knew that he risked losing his money! There
is not one that would not save himself in that way, if he
had the chance. But you pride yourself on being so much
better than other men! Mr. Chaffinch is right; you have
what he calls a `moral pride'! You—”

“Stop!” Joseph interrupted. “Who was it that professed
such concern about my faith? Who sent Mr. Chaffinch
to insult me?”

“Faith and business are two different things: all the
churches know that. There was Mr. Sanctus, in the city:
he subscribed ten thousand dollars to the Church of the

Acceptance: he couldn't pay it, and they levied on his property,
and sold him out of house and home! Really, you
are as ignorant of the world as a baby!”

“God keep me so, then!” he exclaimed.

“However,” she resumed, after a pause, “since you insist
on our bearing the loss, I shall expect of your moral pride
that you bear it patiently, if not cheerfully. It is far from
being ruin to us. The rise in property will very likely
balance it, and you will still be worth what you were.”

“That is not all,” he said. “I will not mention my
greatest loss, for you are incapable of understanding it; but
how much else have you saddled me with? Let me have a
look at it!”

He crossed the hall and entered the new apartment, Julia
following. Joseph inspected the ceiling, the elaborate and
overladen cornices, the marble chimney-piece, and finally
peered into the boxes and packages, not trusting himself to
speak while the extent of the absurd splendor to which she
had committed him grew upon his mind. Finally he said,
striving to make his voice calm, although it trembled in his
throat: “Since you were so free to make all these purchases,
perhaps you will tell me how they are to be paid
for?”

“Let me manage it, then,” she answered. “There is no
hurry. These country mechanics are always impatient,—I
should call them impertinent, and I should like to teach
them a lesson. Sellers are under obligations to the buyers,
and they are bound to be accommodating. They have so
many bills which are never paid, that an extension of time
is the least they can do. Why, they will always wait a
year, two years, three years, rather than lose.”

“I suppose so.”

“Then,” said Julia, deceived by Joseph's quiet tone
“their profits are so enormous, that it would only be fair to
reduce the bills. I am sure, that if I were to mention that
you were embarrassed by heavy losses, and press them hard,
they would compromise with me on a moderate amount.
You know they allow what is called a margin for losses,—
pa told me, but I forget how much,—they always expect to
lose a certain percentage; and, of course, it can make no
difference by whom they lose it. You understand, don't
you?”

“Yes: it is very plain.”

“Pa could help me to get both a reduction and an extension
of time. The bills have not all been sent, and it will
be better to wait two or three months after they have come
in. If the dealers are a little uneasy in advance, they
will be all the readier to compromise afterwards.”

Joseph walked up and down the hollow room, with his
hands clasped behind his back and his eyes fixed upon the
floor. Suddenly he stopped before her and said: “There is
another way.”

“Not a better one, I am certain.”

“The furniture has not yet been unpacked, and can be
returned to them uninjured. Then the bills need not be
paid at all.”

“And we should be the laughing-stock of the neighborhood!”
she cried, her eyes flashing. “I never heard of anything
so ridiculous! If the worst comes to the worst, you
can sell Bishop those fifty acres over the hill, which he stands
ready to take, any day. But you'd rather have a dilapidated
house,—no parlor,—guests received in the dining-room and
the kitchen,—the Hopetons and your friends, the Helds,
sneering at us behind our backs! And what would your

credit be worth? We shall not even get trusted for groceries
at the village store, if you leave things as they
are!”

Joseph groaned, speaking to himself rather than answering
her: “Is there no way out of this? What is done is done;
shall I submit to it, and try to begin anew? or—”

He did not finish the sentence. Julia turned her head,
so that only the chimney-piece and the furniture could see
the sparkle of triumph in her eyes. She felt that she had
maintained her position; and, what was far more, she now
clearly saw the course by which she could secure it.

She left the room, drawing a full breath of relief as the
door closed behind her. The first shock of the evil news was
over, and it had not fallen quite so heavily as she had feared.
There were plenty of devices in store whereby all that was
lost might be recovered. Had not her life at home been an
unbroken succession of devices? Was she not seasoned to
all manner of ups and downs, and wherefore should this first
failure disconcert her? The loss of the money was, in reality,
much less important to her than the loss of her power
over Joseph. Weak as she had supposed him to be, he had
shown a fierce and unexpected resistance, which must be suppressed
now, or it might crush her whole plan of life. It
seemed to her that he was beginning to waver: should she
hasten a scheme by which she meant to entrap him into
submission,—a subtle and dangerous scheme, which must
either wholly succeed, or, wholly failing, involve her in its
failure?

Rapidly turning over the question in her mind, she entered
her bed-room. Locking the door, she walked directly
to the looking-glass; the curtain was drawn from the window,
and a strong light fell upon her face.

“This will never do!” she said to herself. “The anxiety
and excitement have made me thin again, and I seem to
have no color.” She unfastened her dress, bared her neck,
and pushed the ringlets behind her ears. “I look pinched;
a little more, and I shall look old. If I were a perfect brunette
or a perfect blonde, there would be less difficulty; but
I have the most provoking, unmanageable complexion! I
must bring on the crisis at once, and then see if I can't fill
out these hollows.”

She heard the front door opening, and presently saw
Joseph on the lawn. He looked about for a moment, with
a heavy, bewildered air, and then slowly turned towards the
garden. She withdrew from the window, hesitated a moment,
murmured to herself, “I will try, there cannot be a
better time!” and then, burying her face in her hands and
sobbing, rushed to Lucy's room.

“O Lucy!” she cried, “help me, or I am lost! How
can I tell you? it is harder than I ever dreamed!”

“Is the loss so very serious,—so much more than you
feared?” Lucy asked.

“Not that—O, if that were all! But Joseph—” Here
Julia's sobs became almost hysterical. “He is so cruel; I
did advise him, as I told you, for his sake, and now he says
that pa and I have combined to cheat him! I don't think he
knows how dreadful his words are. I would sooner die than
hear any more of them! Go to him, Lucy; he is in the
garden; perhaps he will listen to you. I am afraid, and I
never thought I should be afraid of him!”

“It is very, very said,” said Lucy. “But if he is in such
an excited condition he will surely resent my coming.
What can I say?”

“Say only what you heard me speak! Tell him of my

anxiety, my self-reproach! Tell him that even if he will
believe that pa meant to deceive him, he must not believe
it of me! You know, Lucy, how he wrongs me in his
thoughts; if you knew how hard it is to be wronged by a
husband, you would pity me!”

“I do pity you, Julia, from my very heart; and the proof
of it is, that I will try to do what you ask, against my own
sense of its prudence. If Joseph repels my interference, I
shall not blame him.”

“Heaven bless you, Lucy! He will not repel you, he
cannot!” Julia sobbed. “I will lie down and try to grow
calm.” She rose from the bed, upon which she had flung
herself, and tottered through the door. When she had
reached her own room, she again looked at her image in the
glass, nodded and smiled.

Lucy walked slowly along the garden paths, plucking a
flower or two, and irresolute how to approach Joseph. At
last, descending the avenue of box, she found him seated in
the semicircular enclosure, gazing steadfastly down the valley,
but (she was sure) not seeing the landscape. As he
turned his head at her approach, she noticed that his eyelids
were reddened and his lips compressed with an expression
of intense pain.

“Sit down, Lucy; I am a grim host, to-day,” he said,
with a melancholy attempt at a smile.

Lucy had come to him with a little womanly indignation,
for Julia's sake, in her heart; but it vanished utterly, and
the tears started into her eyes. For a moment she found it
impossible to speak.

“I shall not talk of my ignorance any more, as I once
did,” Joseph continued. “If there is a class in the school
of the world, graded according to experience of human

meanness and treachery and falsehood, I ought to stand at
the head.”

Lucy stretched out her hand in protest. “Do not speak
so bitterly, Joseph; it pains me to hear you.”

“How would you have me speak?”

“As a man who will not see ruin before him because a
part of his property happens to slip from him,—nay, if all
were lost! I always took you to be liberal, Joseph, never
careful of money for money's sake, and I cannot understand
how your nature should be changed now, even though you
have been the victim of some dishonesty.”

“`Some dishonesty'! You are thinking only of money:
what term would you give to the betrayal of a heart, the
ruin of a life?”

“Surely, Joseph, you do not, you cannot mean —”

“My wife, of course. It needed no guessing.”

“Joseph!” Lucy cried, seizing the opportunity, “indeed
you do her wrong! I know what anxiety she has suffered
during your absence. She blamed herself for having advised
you to risk so much in an uncertain speculation,
dreaded your disappointment, resolved to atone for it, if
she could! She may have been rash and thoughtless, but
she never meant to deceive you. If you are disappointed
in some qualities, you should not shut your eyes and refuse
to see others. I know, now, that I have myself not been
fair in my judgment of Julia. A nearer acquaintance has
led me to conceive what disadvantages of education, for
which she is not responsible, she is obliged to overcome: she
sees, she admits them, and she will overcome them. You,
as her husband, are bound to show her a patient kindness
—”

“Enough!” Joseph interrupted; “I see that you have

touched pitch, also. Lucy, your first instinct was right. The
woman whom I am bound to look upon as my wife is false
and selfish in every fibre of her nature; how false and selfish
I only can know, for to me she takes off her mask!”

“Do you believe me, then?” Lucy's words were slightly
defiant. She had not quite understood the allusion to
touching pitch, and Joseph's indifference to her advocacy
seemed to her unfeeling.

“I begin to fear that Philip was right,” said Joseph, not
heeding her question. “Life is relentless: ignorance or
crime, it is all the same. And if God cares less about our
individual wrongs than we flatter ourselves He does, what
do we gain by further endurance? Here is Lucy Henderson
satisfied that my wife is a suffering angel; thinks my
nature is changed, that I am cold-hearted and cruel, while
I know Lucy to be true and noble, and deceived by the very
goodness of her own heart!”

He lifted his head, looked in her face a moment, and then
went on:—

“I am sick of masks; we all wear them. Do you want
to know the truth, Lucy? When I look back I can see it
very clearly, now. A little more than a year ago the one
girl who began to live in my thoughts was you! Don't
interrupt me: I am only speaking of what was. When I
went to Warriner's, it was in the hope of meeting you, not
Julia Blessing. It was not yet love that I felt, but I think
it would have grown to that, if I had not been led away by
the cunningest arts ever a woman devised. I will not speculate
on what might have been: if I had loved you, perhaps
there would have been no return: had there been, I
should have darkened the life of a friend. But this I say;
I honor and esteem you, Lucy, and the loss of your friendship,

if I now lose it, is another evil service which my wife
has done me.”

Joseph little suspected how he was torturing Lucy. She
must have been more than woman, had not a pang of wild
regret for the lost fortune, and a sting of bitter resentment
against the woman who had stolen it, wrung her heart.
She became deadly pale, and felt that her whole body was
trembling.

“Joseph,” she said, “you should not, must not, speak so
to me.”

“I suppose not,” he answered, letting his head sink wearily;
“it is certainly not conventional; but it is true, for
all that! I could tell you the whole story, for I can read
it backwards, from now to the beginning, without misunderstanding
a word. It would make no difference; she is
simple, natural, artless, amiable, for all the rest of the
world, while to me—”

There was such despondency in his voice and posture,
that Lucy, now longing more than ever to cheer him, and
yet discouraged by the failure of her first attempt, felt
sorely troubled.

“You mistake me, Joseph,” she said, at last, “if you
think you have lost my friendship, my sincerest sympathy.
I can see that your disappointment is a bitter one, and my
prayer is that you will not make it bitterer by thrusting
from you the hopeful and cheerful spirit you once showed.
We all have our sore trials.”

Lucy found her own words very mechanical, but they
were the only ones that came to her lips. Joseph did not
answer; he still sat, stooping, with his elbows on his knees,
and his forehead resting on his palms.

“If I am deceived in Julia,” she began again, “it is better

to judge too kindly than too harshly. I know you cannot
change your sentence against her now, nor, perhaps,
very soon. But you are bound to her for life, and you must
labor—it is your sacred duty—to make that life smoother
and brighter for both. I do not know how, and I have no
right to condemn you if you fail. But, Joseph, make the
attempt now, when the most unfortunate experience that is
likely to come to you is over; make it, and it may chance
that, little by little, the old confidence will return, and you
will love her again.”

Joseph started to his feet. “Love her!” he exclaimed,
with suppressed passion,—“love her! I hate her!”

There was a hissing, rattling sound, like that of some
fierce animal at bay. The thick foliage of two of the tall
box-trees was violently parted. The branches snapped and
gave way: Julia burst through, and stood before them.