University of Virginia Library

1. LETTER THE FIRST.

IT is a rainy summer day, good Cousin Jane, and
that is why I find time to commence my promised
series of letters to you. I have been here three weeks
already, and have scarcely put pen to paper, save to
announce my safe arrival to father and mother; but
to-day I have drawn the cosiest of easy-chairs to the
pleasantest of windows, and, with my port-folio on my
knee, I feel just in the mood for writing to you. A
fancy strikes me to make you, who have not seen me
during the five years since your marriage, a pen-picture
of myself. For once, some power shall give me
the wondrous gift

and I will make use of this mental illumination for
your benefit. Eight years ago, when I was seventeen,
you and I graduated at Madame D'Arblay's together.
You know what I was then, young, hopeful,
enthusiastic, and—you see I am going to be honest—
beautiful. What an enchanted life seemed opening
before me—a path wherein should be perpetually
springing up roses of love and hope, whose buds I
was to gather for my bosom, whose fragrance was to
surround me eternally. You know, too, what I was
three years after, when you were married to Charley
Fosdick, and I stood your bridesmaid.

You know that at twenty I had changed a little
from what I was at seventeen. Only a little, it is true.
My beauty was fresh and riant as ever; still I wore
the roses of love and hope in my bosom, but I had
found out there were now and then thorns among
them. The world did not look quite so much like
Eden, and I had learned one lesson—I do think it is
the most sorrowful one a young heart can learn—the
fashionable measure of social importance, reckoning
a man's worth by his dollars and cents.

Since then you have not seen me. We have only
corresponded at rare intervals; but I know your old
love for me is warm in your heart, and I know you
were thoroughly in earnest when you begged me to
sit down in this quiet country place and give you an
account of myself. I will be faithful, Cousin Jane, no
matter how often my cheek may crimson with shame
at the unveiling of my heart.

The five years since you went off with Charley Fosdick—by
the way, you say you've never regretted it,
though he is only a country doctor in that out-of-the-way
town—those five years have all been passed by
me in one desperate struggle to get married—suitably
married—married to please papa and mamma, who
have lived, for my sake, beyond their means, and are
so ambitious to see me what they call well established.

I said the years have all been passed thus, and yet
not quite all. I stopped once by the wayside, in my
long climbing up this weary mountain of social position,
to dream a dream. I believe I was almost in
love. In society I met one who was in the world,

yet not of it. How shall I describe Philip Wyndham
to you? You know whom I mean, for I remember
your writing me, when his first book came out, that
you had read it, and how charmed you were with its
grace, its simple pathos; how thrilled by the utterances
of a deep, strong heart, making itself heard now
and then amid the flowers and the sunshine. You
can not think how strange it was to see him in the
gay circles of our set, with his bright, earnest eyes,
his sweet smile, and his calm forehead. Withal, he
wore such shocking clothes—a threadbare black suit,
always the same. It was at Mrs. Emerson's I met
him first; you know what a woman she is to surround
herself with lions; and then, for a while, every one
took him up, and he was quite the fashion, only mammas
took especial care that their daughters should
have no opportunity to fall in love with him. They
need not have done this, for Mr. Wyndham would
have been harder to win than any lady of them all.

I think he accepted the patronizing invitations extended,
at first, solely for the sake of studying human
life in a new phase. He was miles above their patronage,
and he would have been as little cast down by
their ceasing to invite him altogether as he was elevated
by their extending to him their condescending
courtesy in the first place. He was a noble man,
Cousin Jane.

I was twenty-three that winter. My nature had
become pretty well incrusted with worldliness. I was
tired, though, of the dull routine in which I moved.
My naturally restless spirit longed for change and excitement.
For a time, in his acquaintance, it found
both. I don't know how I managed to attract him to

my side. That I did so attract him is the proudest
thought in all this review of my past life—that I had
power to charm that lofty heart, that keen intellect,
that sensitive, æsthetic nature. I think he understood
all my capabilities. He saw what I might have been,
brought up in another sphere, where wealth and style
were less omnipotent. And I, oh! Cousin Jane, an
angel's wing seemed to brush the dust from my heart,
and make it fit for the pure anthems of heaven to echo
through it.

For a time I forgot “the world, the flesh, and the
devil.” I gave up my shopping expeditions; I ceased
to frequent Broadway; I went to half a dozen successive
parties without a new dress; I returned to my
old passion for poetry and music; I went backward
over “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome.” In short, I was well-nigh in love.
But what was I, that Philip Wyndham should gild
me with the refined alchemy of his fancy—should
pour out at my feet the sweet incense of his praise?
Those were enchanted months in which I met him so
frequently. A new glory lay on land and sea; the skies
were bluer and the stars brighter. I never thought,
however, of marriage. The idea that he would seek
me as his wife never entered my head. Candidly, I
should have thought myself as unworthy of the honor
as I was unfit to be a poor man's wife.

It was a strange place to listen to the secret of a poet's
love, but never did sweeter words flood a woman's
heart with joy than his soul uttered to mine one destiny-marked
night, in an alcove of a fashionable parlor,
with the music of Strauss's aerial waltzes flooding
the air, and the silken billows rolling past us in the

dance, like a glittering sea of bright and mazy hues,
whereon diamonds flashed and flowers were flung with
lavish hands, to die, breathing out their fragrance.
With this mirth, and song, and dance about us, our
souls talked to each other—our two souls, in all that
crowd, utterly alone. I say our souls, for the words
we said were no lip utterance merely; our hearts
forced the naked truth to our lips.

I shall not tell you with what phrases he told me
that he loved me. That must be my own cherished
secret. I answered him frankly. I was impelled to
speak all the truth. I told him what a new joy I had
found in his presence. I told him if he had met me
when I was less worldly, I might have loved him;
but now, style, and fashion, and luxury had grown a
necessity to me, and I could not give them up. I
should marry, sometime, a man who would give me
these, and I should try to forget all that I had ever felt
for him. What do you think he answered me?

“I pity you, Helen Hamilton; I pity you far more
than I do myself. I have loved you indeed with all
the strength, all the passion of my heart; still for me,
time and nature will bring solace; but for you—you,
who are smothering all your holiest hopes, all your
best instincts, under the silken panoply of fashion,
there will come, when it is too late, an awakening. I
know you better than you know yourself. I know
how your heart will cry out, one day, in its despair,
for a love cast away and trodden under foot; for you
do love me, Helen. I know how you will recoil in
very bitterness from the rich and fashionable husband
you will choose, and in that hour may God shield you
from sorrow and from sin.”

I have never looked on his face since that night,
Cousin Jane. For months after that I was very sick,
scarcely able to leave my bed, and when I recovered
he had left New York, and gone I do not know where,
for another lion had taken his place at Mrs. Emerson's
reunions, and he was nearly forgotten.

Two summers and two winters have past since then,
and I am not married yet. I can see mamma is beginning
to be alarmed lest I never shall be. Last winter,
however, came an admirer after her own heart—
Lionel Fitz-Herbert. He had just returned from
abroad. He is a son of one of the richest families on
Fifth Avenue, and quite the fashion. He certainly
paid me a great deal of attention, but he did not propose;
nor, though, I confess to you, Cousin Jane, I
used all my arts, could I by any means succeed in
bringing him to the point. I can draw his portrait
for you with ease. It will not be a Rembrandt. There
are no strong lights and shadows in his character.
This is he—Mrs. Charley Fosdick, Mr. Lionel Fitz-Herbert:

A small, smooth head, with well-brushed brown
hair; small, though very regular features; clear red
and white complexion; small hands and feet; short,
slight figure, dressed in the height of fashion, and an
echo-like manner and conversation, formed, you may
be sure, in the best society. He has no particular vices,
no particular principles, no particular ideas. Add to
this a fortune almost unlimited, and the finest turn-out
in New York, and you have a very good idea of the
young gentleman for whose admiration a score of pretty
women—your cousin Helen Hamilton among the
rest—have angled desperately all winter.

This spring I became out of patience with it all. I
did not want to go to Saratoga; I hate it, the hot,
dusty place, and I persuaded mamma—I assure you it
was a work of difficulty—to let me come here and stay
with Caddie. You never saw my cousin Caddie. She
was a splendid girl, educated in Boston, refined, gifted,
handsome. We thought, at the time, that she threw
herself away when she married William Ripley, young,
poor, and resolved to be a farmer, but since I have
been here I have changed my mind. Will is handsome,
gentlemanly, well-educated—one of nature's noblemen,
in short; just the one to round her life into
fullness and harmony. I do not think I ever saw so
happy a couple. Despite her many cares and her two
children, Caddie is as young and gay as at sixteen.

Perhaps you don't know that this village, where
their pretty place, Hillside, is located, was my mother's
birth-place. Grandfather Weaver's old home, Oakland,
they call it, is about half a mile from here. The
house is tenantless now, but in excellent, repair, and the
old oak-trees around it are worthy of an English park.
I pass a great many hours under the shade of those
trees, or sitting in the wide veranda which surrounds
the old house, dreaming strange dreams about my
mother's youth; about my own life; the destiny which
seems so long in coming to me; which I sometimes
have a curious presentiment that I shall meet here.

I had no idea that I should like a country life so
well. This is my first experience of it, for Saratoga,
and Newport, and Long Branch are not country. I
am beginning to think that country people are better
than the denizens of the town. They have more time
to think. Life seems here a more solemn, a more earnest

thing. Wealth and show, satins and diamonds,
carriages and point lace, seem so worthless when one
walks under the oaks and larches, and looks up through
their boughs to the everlasting sky, or hears the clear
bird-songs pulsing downward. Will and Caddie seem
to me—though their help is not numerous, and they
have to spend not a few hours of every day at work
with their own hands—to live far more intellectual
lives than most of our fashionable idlers on Fifth Avenue.
There is scarcely a good book, the utterance
of a strong, true soul, that does not find its way to Hill-side.
There are some of these whose acquaintance I
have made here for the first time, for which I feel that
I shall be better all my life.

“Helen — Nellie — Nell!” That is Caddie's voice
calling me. I guess it is mail-time, and I must run
down stairs and see what has come for me. Then I'll
come up again and finish my letter for you.

Oh, Cousin Jane, what shall I do? I am in sore
perplexity. There was no letter for me, but Will had
received two, and there are to be two visitors at Hill-side.
Whom do you think? The first is he whom I
have not seen for more than two years—Philip Wyndham.
It seems he has always been a friend of Will's,
and he is coming here, he writes, for a little peace and
rest, a little of the comforts of true friendship, and to
finish off a book which he had promised to give the
publishers in September. He does not know that I
am here, and as he is coming to-morrow there is no
time to tell him. Indeed, if there were ever so much
time, why should he be told? It is not probable that
he would avoid me. I am nothing to him now. Is

it his fault that the sound of his voice should rouse
from its long trance a silent sleeper in my heart to
mock me with words against which I may not close
my ears; to look at me with eyes before which my
soul will quiver with agony? But he will never know
it. He will never know that this strange ghost of the
past is not dead utterly; that it folds its shroud about
it sometimes, and rises up in the midnight with its
still, accusing eyes. After all, it shall not rise. I will,
I must control myself. Philip Wyndham can be nothing
to me; I can be nothing to him. I will teach my
heart not to quicken its pulses at the sound of his
name. Perhaps our second visitor will help me.

Who do you think he is, Cousin Jane? No other
than my admirer of this winter, Mr. Lionel Fitz-Herbert.
It seems he, too, knows Will; in fact, they
were in college together. He has ascertained my
whereabouts from my mother, and written to ask Will
and Caddie for permission to come down here and
make a visit. They are too hospitable to refuse. But
he will not arrive till next week. In the mean time,
I shall have been seven days under the same roof with
Philip Wyndham. But why do I speculate on that?
my life-path leads otherwhere.

It seems, then, that Mr. Fitz-Herbert was more impressed
with my attractions than I feared. He is evidently
coming here solely on my account. The probable
result will be an engagement. This will completely
satisfy papa and mamma in their ambitious
views for me, and it will insure me, for life, the possession
of all the luxuries that have become so necessary.
Well—I say well, and it shall be well. I will
not let my foolish fancies make it ill.

I must close, to send you this letter by the evening
mail, but I will write again soon, and keep you advised
of the progress of this drama, whose result will
determine the hereafter of your cousin,