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CHAPTER XLII

"Good morning, missis," and Chloe's turbaned head followed the salutation. "Didn't I tell you dat Massa Charley be born wid a silver spoon in his mouf? His dish right side up when it rains, for certain.

"See here, missis," and she handed Rose a small package, containing a pair of coral and gold sleeve-ties for Charley's dimpled shoulders. "Didn't I tell you dat missis couldn't lose sight of him? and she sent me here for him to come ride in de carriage wid her again to-day, and eat dinner at de big house, and all dat," and Chloe rubbed her hands together, and looked the very incarnation of delight.

"Well," said Rose, "Charley has nothing fine to wear; only a simple white frock, Chloe."

"All de same, missis; he handsome enuff widout any ting. Missis must take powerful liking to give him dese; dey are Massa Vincent's gold sleeve-ties he wore when he little piccaninny like Charley dare."

Rose took them in her hand, and was lost in thought.

"Jess as good, for all dat, missis," said Chloe, thinking Rose objected to them because they were secondhand. "Missis wouldn't gib dem away to every body, but she say Charley so like young Massa Vincent, dat she couldn't talk of nuffing else de whole bressed time. Hope you won't tink of sending them back, missis," said Chloe, apologetically; "she is old and childish, you know."

"No," said Rose, sadly; "Charley may wear them;" and she looped them up over his little white shoulders, with a prayer that his manhood might better fulfill the promise of his youth.

"Ki!" exclaimed Chloe, as she held him off at arm's length. "Won't ole missis' servants – Betty, and Nancy, and Dolly, and John, and de coachman, and all dat white trash, tink dey nebber see de like of dis before? And won't Massa Charley make 'em all step round, one of dese days, wid dem big black eyes of his?"

Chloe's soliloquies were very suggestive, and Rose sat a long while after her departure analyzing Charley's disposition, and wondering if the seeds of such a spirit lay dormant in her child, waiting only the sun of prosperity to quicken them into life. How many mothers, as they rocked their babes, have pondered these things in their hearts; and how many more, alas! have reaped the bitter harvest of those who take no thought for the soul's morrow!

CHAPTER XLIII

"And so you will not give me the poor satisfaction of punishing and exposing the scoundrel who has treated you so basely?" said John to his sister, as they sat in her little studio.

"No," said Gertrude; "he has taken that trouble off your hands – he has punished himself. He has traveled all over the Union in search of employment, and succeeded in nothing he has undertaken. He has met with losses and disappointments in every shape, and occupies, at present, a most inferior business position, I am told. Now that I have become famous, and it is out of his power to injure me, he quails at the mention of my name in public, and dreads nothing so much as recognition by those who are acquainted with his baseness. He sneaks through life, with the consciousness that he has played the part of a scoundrel – what could even you add to this?"

"But the idea of such a miserable apology for a man getting a divorce from a sister of mine," said John, striding impatiently across the room. "Why did you not anticipate him, Gertrude? and with right on your side, too."

"Had I been pecuniarily able to do so," replied Gertrude, "I had not the slightest wish to oppose a divorce, especially as I knew it could be obtained on no grounds that would compromise me. For months after Stahle left me, and, indeed, before, he and his spies had been on my track. Had there been a shadow of a charge they could have preferred against my good name, then would have been their hour of triumph! I have a copy of the divorce papers in my possession, and the only allegation there preferred is, that I did not accept Stahle's invitation to join him when he wrote me, in the manner I have related to you."

"But the world, Gertrude, the world," said the irritated John, "will not understand this."

"My dear John," said Gertrude, "they who desire to believe a lie, will do so in the face of the clearest evidence to the contrary. But I have found out that though a person (a woman especially) may suffer much from the bitter persecution of such persons, from the general undeserved suspicion of wrong, and from the pusillanimity of those who should be her defenders, yet even in such a position, a woman can never be injured essentially, save by her own acts, for God is just, and truth and innocence will triumph. I am righted before the world; my untiring industry and uprightness of life are the refutal of his calumnies. Leave him to his kennel obscurity, my dear John. I do not now need the blow that I am sure you would not have been slow to strike for me had you known how your sister was oppressed."

"I don't know but you are right, Gertrude, and yet – if he ever should cross my path, my opinion might undergo a sudden revulsion. Does he still keep up the show of piety?"

"So I have heard," said Gertrude. "The first thing he does, when he goes into a new place is to connect himself with some church. What a pity, John, such men should bring religion into disrepute."

"You think so, do you? And yet you refuse to expose it. It is just because of this that so many hypocrites go unmasked. Sift them out, I say – if there is not a communicant left in the church. I do not believe in throwing a wide mantle over such whited sepulchers."

"Do you suppose," said Gertrude, "that they whose houses are built on such a sandy foundation will quietly see them undermined? Such a hue and cry as they will raise (all for the honor of the cause, of course!) about your 'speaking lightly of religion and its professors!'"

"Very true," said John, "it is speaking lightly of its professors but not of its possessors. They might as well tell you to keep dumb about a gang of counterfeiters, lest it should do injury to the money-market; bah! Gertrude, I have no patience with such tampering; but to dismiss an unpleasant topic, you have plenty of employment, I see;" and John glanced round the room at Gertrude's pictures. "I am proud of you, Gertrude; I honor you for your self-reliance; but what is your fancy, with your artistic reputation, for living such a nun's life?"

"Well," said Gertrude, "in the first place, my time is too valuable to me to be thrown away on bores and idlers, and the Paul Pry family, in all its various ramifications. Autograph hunters I have found not without their use, as I never answer their communications, and they find me in letter stamps. But entre nous, John, I have no very exalted opinion of the sex to which you belong.

"Men are so gross and unspiritual, John, so wedded to making money and promiscuous love, so selfish and unchivalric; of course there are occasionally glorious exceptions, but who would be foolish enough to wade through leagues of brambles, and briars, to find perchance one flower? Female friends, of course, are out of the question, always excepting Rose, whose title is no misnomer. And as to general society, it is so seldom one finds a congenial circle that, having resources of my own, I feel disinclined to encounter the risk."

"This isolation is unnatural; Gertrude, you can not be happy."

"Who is?" asked Gertrude. "Are you? Is Rose? Where is the feast at which there is no skeleton? I make no complaint. I enjoyed more happiness in the five years of my first wedded life than falls to the lot of most mortals in a life-time. I know that such an experience can not be repeated, so I live on the past. You say I am not happy; I am negatively happy. If I gather no honey, I at least escape the sting."

"I wish for my sake, Gertrude, you would go into society. I can not but think you would form new ties that would brighten life. As a woman, you can not be insensible to your attractive power."

"I have no desire to exert it," replied Gertrude; "there are undoubtedly men in want of housekeepers, and plenty of widowers in want of nurses for their children. My desires do not point that way."

"You are incorrigible, Gertrude. Do you suppose there is no man who has sense enough to love you for yourself alone?"

"What if I do not want to be loved?" asked his sister.

"But you do," persisted John; "so long as there is any vitality in a women, she likes to be loved."

"Well, then, granting your proposition for the sake of the argument, please give me credit for a most martyr-like and persistent self-denial," said Gertrude, laughing.

"I will give you credit for nothing, till your heart gets thawed out a little; and I think I know a friend of mine who can do it."

"Forewarned forearmed," said his sister.

CHAPTER XLIV

"Rose, you are not looking well, this morning. Confess, now, that you did not sleep a wink last night. I heard the pattering of your little feet over my head long after midnight."

"Very likely, for I was unaccountably restless. I will tell you what troubled me. I was trying to think of some way to support myself; I wish I had a tithe of your energy, Gertrude."

"Well you have not, you are just made to be loved and petted. You are too delicate a bit of porcelain to be knocked and hustled round amid the delf of the world. Your gift is decidedly wife-wise, and the sooner you let my good brother John make you one, the better for all of us."

"What do you think of my turning authoress?" asked Rose, adroitly turning the subject.

"Oh, do it, by all means," mocked Gertrude, "it is the easiest thing in the world to write a book. It would be just the thing for a little sensitive-plant like you. I think I see it fairly launched. I think I see you sit down with the morning paper in your hand to read a criticism on it, from some coarse pen, dressed in a little brief authority, in the absence of some editor; a fellow who knows no difference between a sun-flower and a violet, and whose daily aspirations are bounded by an oyster supper, or a mint-julep. I think I see you thumped on the head with his butchering cleaver, every nerve quivering under the crucifixion of his coarse scalpel."

"But surely there are those who know a good book when they see it, and I mean to write a good book."

"You little simpleton, as if that would save you! Do you suppose you will be forgiven for writing a good book? No, my dear; the editor of 'The Daily Lorgnette,' takes it up, he devours a chapter or two, he begins to fidget in his chair, he sees there is genius in it, he gets up and strides across his office, he recollects certain books of his own, which nobody ever read but his publishers and himself, and every word he reads irritates that old sore. The next day, under the head of book notices you will see the following in the Daily Lorgnette: —

"'Gore House, by Rose Ringdove.'

"'We have perused this book; it is unnecessary to state in its title-page that it was written by a female hand. The plot is feeble and inartistic. In dialogue, the writer utterly fails; the heroine, Effie Waters, is a stiff, artificial creation, reminding us constantly of those females painted on the pannels of omnibuses, convulsively grasping to their bosoms a posy, or a poodle. There is an indescribable and heterogeneous jumbling of characters in this volume. The authoress vainly endeavors to straighten out this snarl in the last chapter, which has nothing to recommend it but that it is the last. We advise the authoress of 'Gore House' to choose some other escape-valve for her restless femininity; petticoat literature has become a drug in the market.'

"How do you like that?" said Gertrude, laughing.

"Well, the editor of the 'Christian Warrior' sits down to read 'Gore House,' he takes out his spectacles, and wipes them deliberately on his red-silk pocket-handkerchief, he adjusts them on the bridge of his sagacious nose; he reads on undisturbed until he comes to the description of 'Deacon Pendergrast,' who is very graphically sketched as a 'wolf in sheep's clothing.' Conscience holds up the mirror, and he beholds himself, like unto a man who sees his natural face in a glass. Straightway he sitteth down, and writeth the following impartial critique of the book:

"'We have read "Gore House." We do not hesitate to pronounce it a bad book, unfit to lie on the table of any religious family. In it, religion is held up to ridicule. It can not fail to have a most pernicious influence on the minds of the young. We hope Christian editors all over the land will not hesitate, out of courtesy to the authoress, to warn the reading public of this locomotive poison.'

"The editor of the 'Christian Warrior' then hands the notice to his foreman for an early insertion, puts on his hat, and goes to the anniversary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of which he is president.

"The editor of the 'John Bull' reads 'Gore House.' He is an Englishman, and pledged to his British blood, while he makes his living out of America, to abuse, underrate, and vilify, her government, institutions, and literature, therefore he says, curtly:

"'We have received "Gore House" – they of course who wish for literature, especially female literature, will look the other side of the Atlantic." He then takes one of the most glowing passages in 'Gore House,' and transposing the words slightly, passes it off for editorial in his own columns.

"The editor of 'The Timbrel' reads Gore House. He has a female relative, Miss Clementina Clemates, whose mission she thinks is to be an authoress. In furtherance of this design of hers, he thinks it policy to decry all other rival books. So he says:

"'We have read "Gore House." We ought to say we have tried to read it. The fact is, the only lady book recently published that we can heartily recommend to our readers is "Sketches of the Fireside, by Clementine Clemates."'

"The editor of the 'Dinsmore Republican' reads the book. He is of the Don Quixote order, goes off like an old pistol half primed, whenever the right chord is struck. Gore House takes him captive at once. He wishes there were a tournament, or some such arrangement, by which he could manifest his devotion to and admiration of the authoress. He throws down the book, unties his neckcloth, which seems to be strangling him, loosens his waistband button to give his breathing apparatus more play, throws up the window, runs his fingers through his hair, till each one seems as charged with electricity as a lightning-rod, and then seizing his goose-quill, piles on the commendatory adjectives till your modesty exclaims, in smothering agony, 'Save me from my friends, and I will take care of my enemies.'"

"But tell me," said Rose, "is there no bright side to this subject you can depict me?"

"Oh, yes," said Gertrude, "there are editors who can read a book and deal fairly and conscientiously by it and its author, who neither underrate nor overrate from fear or favor, who find fault, not as an escape-valve for their own petulance or indigestion, but gently, kindly, as a wise parent would rebuke his child – editors on whose faith you can rely, whose book reviews are, and can be, depended upon, who feel themselves accountable to other than a human tribunal for their discharge of so important a public trust."

"Well," said Rose, in despair, "if I might be Sappho herself I could not run such a gauntlet of criticism as you have described."

"Far happier to be Cornelia with her jewels," said Gertrude, snatching up the beautiful Charley (I take it Cornelia had a glorious husband). "Fame is a great unrest to a true woman's heart. The fret, and tumult, and din of battle are not for her. The vulgar sneer for which there is no preventive, save the unrecognized one of honor; the impertinent tone of familiarity, supposed to be acceptable by those to whom a woman's heart is yet a sealed book; what are tears to oppose to such bludgeon weapons? No, the fret and din of battle are not for her; but if, at the call of trumpet-tongued necessity, she buckle on the armor, let her fight with what good courage her God may give her, valuing far above the laurel crown, when won, the loving hearts for which she toils – which beat glad welcome home."

CHAPTER XLV

Miss Anne Cooper was a maiden lady of forty-two; a satellite who was well contented to revolve year after year round Madame Vincent, and reflect her golden rays. Madame Vincent had been a beauty in her day, and was still tenacious of her claims to that title. It was Miss Anne's constant study to foster this bump of self-conceit, and so cunningly did she play her part, so indignantly did she deny the advances of Old Time, that madame was flattered into the belief that he had really given her a quit claim.

Miss Anne's disinterested care of the silver, linen, and store-room was quite praiseworthy to those who did not know that she supplied a family of her relatives with all necessary articles from the Vincent resources. It was weary waiting for the expected codicil, and Miss Anne thought "a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush;" so if she occasionally abducted a pound or two of old Hyson or loaf-sugar, or a loaf of cake, or a pair of pies, she reasoned herself into the belief that they were, after all, only her lawful perquisites.

Yes, it was weary waiting for the codicil. Madame Vincent was an invalid, 'tis true; but so she had been these twenty years, having one of those india-rubber constitutions, which seem to set all medical precedents at defiance. She might last along for ten years to come – who knew?

Ten years! Miss Anne looked in the glass; the crow's-feet were planted round her own eyes, and it needed no microscope to see the silver threads in her once luxuriant black locks. Not that Miss Anne did not smile just as sweetly on her patroness as if she would not at any time have welcomed a call upon her from the undertaker. Miss Anne's voice, as she glided through the house with her bunch of keys, had that oily, hypocritical whine which is inseparable from your genuine toady, be it man or woman.

Miss Anne sat in the "blue chamber" of the Vincent mansion – a chamber that had once been occupied by young Master Vincent. Whether this gave it a charm in the lady's eyes or no, Miss Anne never had said. It was true that young Master Vincent, when he had nothing else to do, amused himself with irritating Miss Anne up to the snapping-point. They scarce met without a war of words, half jest, half earnest; but for all that, young Vincent's every wish was anticipated by Miss Anne. It was she who reinserted the enameled buttons in his vests, when they came from the laundress; it was she who righted his room, and kept all his little dandy apparatus (in the shape of perfumes, gold shirt-buttons, hair-oil, watch-guards, rings, etc.) in their appropriate places.

Your D'Orsay abroad, is generally a brute at home; selfish, sarcastic, ill-tempered, and exacting where he thinks it does not pay to be otherwise. All this Miss Anne turned aside with the skill and tact of a woman; occasionally quite quenching him with her witty replies, and forcing him to laugh even in his most diabolical moods. To be sure he would mutter some uncanonical words after it, and tell her to go to the torrid zone; and Miss Anne would smile as usual, drop a low courtesy, and glide from his presence; sometimes to go round making all sorts of housekeeping blunders; sometimes to sit down in her room, with her hands folded in her lap, and her great black eyes fixed immovably on the carpet, for all the world just as if Miss Anne were in love.

Old maids have their little thoughts; why not?

On the present occasion, as I have said, Miss Anne sat in "the blue chamber." She was paler than usual, and her Xantippe lips were closed more firmly together. The thread of her thoughts seemed no smoother than the thread between her fingers, beside breaking which she had broken six of Hemming's best drilled-eyed needles. At length, pushing the stool from beneath her feet, she threw down her work and strode impatiently up and down the apartment.

"To be balked after serving this Leah's apprenticeship, by a baby! and by that baby! I could love it for its likeness to him, did it not stand in my way. It was such doll faces as that baby's mother's which could fascinate Vincent, hey? – soulless, passionless little automatons. Ye gods! and how I have loved him, let these sunken eyes and mottled tresses bear witness," and Miss Anne looked at herself in the glass. "That is all past now; thank heaven, that secret dies with me. Who would ever suspect me of falling in love?" and Miss Anne laughed hysterically. "And now that hope died out, that baby is to come between me and my expected fortune!

"Simple Chloe! She little thought, when she repeated to me what she called 'her young mistress's crazy ravings,' that I could 'find a method in that madness.' Love is sharp-sighted; so is policy. That baby shall never come here. It should not, at any rate, for the mother's sake, pretty little fool!

"Madame will 'adopt' the baby, forsooth! She will fill the house with bibs and pinafores, and install me as head nurse, and to that child! All my fine castles to be knocked down by a baby's puny hand! We shall see.

"That old dotard, to adopt a baby at her time of life, when she ought to be thinking of her shroud."

"Ah, Anne, you there," said a voice at the door, "and busy as usual?"

"Yes, dear madame, work for you is only pastime."

"You were always a good creature, Anne," and madame tapped her affectionately on the shoulder.

"How very well you are looking to-day," said Anne. "Mourning is uncommonly becoming to you. Becky and I were saying this morning, as you passed through the hall, that no one would suppose you to be more than thirty."

"S-i-x-t-y, my dear, s-i-x-t-y," replied the old lady, cautiously closing the door; "but you should not flatter, Annie."

"It is not flattery to speak the truth," said Anne, with a mock-injured air.

"Well, well, don't take a joke so seriously, child; what everybody says must be true, I suppose," and madame looked complacently in the glass.

"Anne, do you know I can not think of any thing but that beautiful child? Don't you think his resemblance to our Vincent very remarkable?"

"Very, dear madame, I am not at all surprised at your fancying him. He is quite a charming little fellow."

"Isn't he, though?" exclaimed madame, with a pleased laugh; "do you know Anne I have about made up my mind to adopt him? I shall call him Vincent L'Estrange Vincent."

"How charming!" said Anne, "how interesting you will look; you will be taken for his mother."

"Very likely," said madame. "I recollect we were quite an object of attraction the day we rode out together; I think I am looking youthful Anne."

"No question of it, my dear madame – here – let me rearrange this bow in your cap; that's it; what execution you must have done in your day, madame."

"I had some lovers," replied the sexegenarian widow, with mock humility, as she twisted a gold circlet upon her finger.

"If report speaks true, their name was legion; I dare say there is some interesting story now, connected with that ring," suggested Anne.

"Poor Perry!" exclaimed madame – "I didn't treat him well; I wonder what ever came of him; how he used to sigh! What beautiful bouquets he brought me – how jealous he was of poor dear Vincent. I was a young, giddy thing then; and yet, I was good-hearted, Anne, for I remember how sorry I used to be that I couldn't marry all my lovers. I told Perry so, one day when he was on his knees to me, but he did not seem as much pleased as I expected. I don't think he always knew how to take a compliment.

"Poor Perry!

"I couldn't help liking him, he had such a dear pair of whiskers, quite à-la-corsair – but Vincent had the money, and I always needed such a quantity of dresses and things, Anne.

"Well – on my wedding-day, Perry walked by the house, looking handsomer than ever. I believe the creature did it on purpose to plague me. He had on white pants, and yellow Marseilles vest, salmon-colored neck-tie, and such a pretty dark-blue body-coat, with brass buttons; such a fit! I burst out a crying; I never saw any thing so heart-breaking as that coat; there was not a wrinkle in it from collar to tail. I don't think I should ever have got over it, Anne, had not my maid Victorine just then brought me in a set of bridal pearls from Vincent; they were really sumptuous.

"Poor dear Perry!

"Well – I was engaged to him just one night; and I think the moon was to blame for that, for as soon as the sun rose next morning, I knew it would not do. He was poor, and it was necessary I should have a fine establishment, you know. But poor Perry! I never shall forget that blue body-coat, never – it was such a fit!"

"The old fool!" exclaimed Anne, dismissing the bland smile from her face as the last fold of madame's dress fluttered through the door; "after all, she might do worse than to adopt this child. I could easier get rid of that baby than her second husband. I must rein up a little, with my flattery, or she may start off on that track.

"Poor Perry, indeed!" soliloquized Anne, "what geese men are! how many of them, I wonder, have had reason to thank their stars, that they did not get what their hearts were once set on. Well – any will-o'-the-wisp who trips it lightly, can lead any Solomon by the nose; it is a humiliating fact;" and Miss Anne took a look at herself in the glass; "sense is at a discount; well, it is the greatest compliment the present generation of men could have paid me, never to have made me an offer."